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ChapX-LA. Copyright No. 

Shelt^ALiS 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 













t 



















THE FACTS AND 
THE FAITH 


A STUDY IN THE RATIONALISM OF THE 
APOSTLES’ CREED 


, ,v ■ 

BEVERLEY E. WARNER, D.D. 

Rector Trinity Church, New Orleans, La. 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 AND J BIBLE HOUSE 


5D Wl 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED 





COPYRIGHT, 1897, By THOMAS WHITTAKER 


The Library 

of Congress 

WASHINGTON 


burr printing house, new york. 




A 5,0- 


PREFACE. 


The vital problem of the Church of Christ in these 
days is the problem of her very existence, how to ac¬ 
credit herself to the manhood and womanhood of this 
generation. 

Will Christianity stand the test of rational and scien- 
Ptific investigation ? 

We who hold the Christian Faith believe that the 
" Apostles' Creed forms a reasonable statement of histori¬ 
cal and spiritual truth concerning God and man. 

A large minority of nominal Christendom, however, 
is restive under the orthodox teachings, and refuses to 
hold as vital truth many of the doctrinal inferences of 
traditional Christianity. 

A great many who believe and call themselves Chris¬ 
tians are confused and puzzled over the apparent dis¬ 
crepancies between the facts of Science and the literal 
text of the Old and New Testament. 

We may think as our education or instinct directs 
about the merits of the subjects in dispute, but the fact 
from which we cannot shrink nowadays, is, that there is 
the same restlessness and dissatisfaction abroad concern¬ 
ing the traditional statements of religious truth, whether 





iv 


PREFACE. 


Roman, Anglican, or Puritan, as there was concerning 
the Papacy in the days preceding and culminating in 
the Reformation in the sixteenth century. 

Fundamental doctrines are denied or belittled ; the 
inspiration of the Scriptures is hotly debated ; the reve¬ 
lations of science are declared to be contradictory to the 
revelations of the sacred Scriptures. Everywhere is 
denial, agitation, upheaval, unrest. 

And this is true not only without but within the 
Church. There are many priests and prophets who are 
disturbed in their minds and with whom are agonizing 
searchings of heart. Laymen in great numbers, who 
seek honestly to do their duty in that state of life where 
they believe it has pleased God to place them, are puz¬ 
zled and perplexed. The faith of a great mass of Chris¬ 
tian people lies in solution. If asked what they mean 
by the Inspiration of the Bible or the doctrine of the 
Atonement, they can only remain dumb, or respond with 
dry and lifeless formulas having no vital connection with 
the affairs of life. 

They no longer hold the mechanical theory of inspira¬ 
tion which has been the traditional belief taught and 
held. They do not believe that the first chapters of 
Genesis contain a literal history. The serpent and the 
fruit of the tree, together with the age of Methuselah 
and the incident of Jonah in the belly of a great fish, 
they treat as allegorial and not historical, as parables of 
life and not as occurrences in time. 

And yet these are God-loving and God-honoring men 
and women, who do believe in an inspiration of the 
Scriptures and that Jesus is the Son of God, although 
they are staggered by the wonder of the Virgin Birth, 


PREFACE. 


V 


and the conception by the Holy Ghost is a stumbling- 
block to their reason. 

What message has Christianity for such as these ? Is 
it sufficient for the Church to simply declare the Faith 
over and over again ; to reiterate proof texts, and to 
preach the perpetual damnation of all who will not re¬ 
ceive spiritual truth on her ipse dixit ? Or shall the 
Church endeavor to justify her faith to the unbeliever 
and show forth the rationalism of the Creed in rela¬ 
tion to life ? 

Traditional Christianity, called Orthodoxy, begs the 
whole question if, in the present advanced state of 
human progress, it declares that Reason has no right to 
reinvestigate, and possibly restate the propositions of 
Christianity. The rational thinking man has a right to 
demand evidence where evidence is procurable, and the 
same right to weigh evidence concerning the authorship 
and authenticity of the Scriptures as concerning any 
other facts of history. The rational Christian has a 
right to seek for harmony in all parts of God’s world, 
seeing that he believes in One God, not many. 

It is the denial of these rights that has driven many a 
man and woman into permanent and bitter unbelief, 
into open and acrid hostility not only to the Church, 
but to Christianity. 

Reason is a gift of God and twin sister to Faith. The 
denial of one’s right to use his larger knowledge in spir¬ 
itual things is not only unfair and illogical, but it pro¬ 
ceeds upon the fallacy that when the faith was delivered 
to the saints, it was also interpreted so that no man 
could fail to perceive its truth, its beauty, and its use. 

This is not true, Jesus Himself being witness. He 


VI 


PREFACE. 


declared that there were things to be added. Many 
things were left unsaid, many more unexplained, because 
men could not bear them. It lies in the very constitu¬ 
tion of the Church that only by the inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit can men be guided into all truth.* 

Who shall say when this process ends ? Who shall 
set an historical limit in time to the working of that 
Holy Spirit, by whom God breathed Life into His cre¬ 
ation, and through whom Jesus Christ promised to be 
with His Church unto the end of the world ? 

It is the duty of the Christian Church to lead men, 
not by and by, but now, into the knowledge of God. 

Once this was done, as it were, by proclamation, and 
an Empire followed an Emperor through the waters of 
baptism. 

Once it was done, as it were, by magic and spells, and 
Faith was a blind credulity in the power of an infallible 
Church to work charms by means of a priesthood and 
sacraments. 

Once, again, an infallible Book took the place of an 
infallible Church, and men gave themselves over to bibli- 
olatry, satisfying their consciences by proof texts, and 
smothering their reason through fear of a rhetorical fire 
that was never quenched, and an allegorical worm that 
died not. 

In all these stages there were religious faith and re¬ 
ligious progress after their kind. God has ever accom¬ 
modated Himself to the lower levels of human knowl¬ 
edge, and the sluggish working of the human intellect, 
and the times of all this ignorance He winked at. 


* John 14: 26; 16: 12, 18. 


PREFACE. 


vii 

In these days the infallible Emperor is a name ; the 
Infallible Church (after the Middle Age fashion) an 
anachronism, and the Infallible Book (after the tradi¬ 
tional sort) is coming to the bar of rational judgment. 

The following pages are addressed to that large body 
of men and women who believe in a God Father, but do 
not as yet see their way to the human apprehension of 
that Fatherhood which we call Christianity. 

Ido not profess to have ‘ 4 harmonized’’ science and 
religion. I should as soon attempt to harmonize morals 
and religion. I have tried to show that the Facts of 
God in one part of His universe cannot finally conflict 
with the Facts of God in any other part of His universe. 

The Facts of God and the Faith in God must be in 
accord, or else we have misapprehended one or the other. 

It is my belief that the Faith expressed by the Facts 
(historical and inferential) of the Apostles’ Creed is a 
rational faith, and that it corresponds with God’s reve¬ 
lations wherever we find them. 

My contention as toward traditional Christianity is, 
that some portions of the Church have laid too great 
stress upon opinions about the Facts rather than upon 
the Facts themselves. A large part of our popular 
traditional Faith is made up of these opinions, which 
have come to overlay the Facts, as the Pharisaic tradition 
overlaid the Facts of the Law. 

The inspiration of the Scriptures is a spiritual fact; 
the literal inspiration is an opinion about the fact. The 
Life Everlasting is a spiritual fact; the endless torment 
of a large part of God’s creation is an opinion. 

So there are opinions concerning the Trinity which 
create three Gods and construct arithmetical puzzles ; 


viii 


PREFACE. 


concerning the Atonement, which make it a mechanical 
and absolutely immoral device; about the Church, 
which make it a spiritually fashionable club ; about 
the Sacraments, which make them fetiches and charms ; 
about the Clergy, which make them conjurors in divine 
things. 

It is these opinions that have thrown up the dust of 
human speculation between God and Man. It is with 
these opinions that rational Christianity has its quarrel. 

In considering anew the Faith as set forth in the 
Apostles’ Creed, we must do so in the light of the facts 
of history and the results of scientific investigation. If 
a man is really a truth-seeker he will not resent this. 
If he is merely seeking to buttress opinions already 
formed he will naturally dispute it. It is certain that a 
literal reading of the first chapters of Genesis conflicts 
with the revealed facts of Science in several important 
particulars. Here there are two conflicting proposi¬ 
tions ; but it is certain as a spiritual fact that God does 
not stultify Himself, and it is equally certain as a scien¬ 
tific fact that this world was not made in six days of 
twenty-four hours each. 

What are we to do ? 

We must square our Faith by the Facts. 

What ! place science over the Bible ? What is this 
bugaboo we call Science ? It is in its essence a part of 
what we believe to be Eternal Life—that is, the revela¬ 
tion of science is the knowledge of God in His World. 
Yes, we will place this knowledge of God in His World 
as to His creation, above the writings of men, although 
they were inspired of God, who did not know as much 
about the process of creation as modern science has re- 


PREFACE. 


IX 


vealed. For these men were evidently not inspired to 
tell us how God made this world and man, but something 
else of far more importance—the relations of God to man 
after he came to the consciousness of himself as lord of 
the earth and all that therein is. 

The only rational Faith for Christianity in this age is 
to hold to the fact of God in this world reconciling it to 
Himself, and to take up into this larger Faith all things 
else concerning man and the purpose of man in the earth 
that may have been or yet may be revealed. 

The Apostles’ Creed is a statement of this Faith, so 
far as it is possible to express divine things in human 
language. It is the attempt of these pages, not to har¬ 
monize all things in heaven and earth according to Chris¬ 
tian philosophy, but to show that there is a rational 
approach to the consideration of every fundamental doc¬ 
trine of Christianity. 

There is no attempt to demonstrate the truths of the 
Creed upon scientific or philosophical grounds, nor to 
prove anything in the strict construction of the word. 

The earnest desire of the writer is to suggest to the 
agnostic that Christianity is not a bundle of metaphysi¬ 
cal propositions, involving scientific absurdities ; to the 
truth-seeking but puzzled man of the world, that the 
Faith of Christ has its roots in the Facts of his life, and 
responds to certain natural demands of his being. And 
to the perplexed Christian disciple, of whom there are 
very many, especially among the young men and women 
of our day, I desire to point out that Christianity is not 
mere acquiescence in a set of propositions more or less 
confusing, in the holding of which they will finally save 
their souls, but is the charter of progressive manhood 


X 


PREFACE. 


and womanhood ; that there is no slavery, intellectual 
or otherwise, in our profession of the Apostles’ Creed, 
but that it is rather a laying hold upon the profoundest 
truths of God, Duty and Immortality. 

In quoting the conclusions of science, I have carefully 
endeavored to give the context of the various writers, 
together with the words which to me and to others seem 
to support some fundamental beliefs of Christianity. It 
is a cowardly sort of argument that garbles the state¬ 
ment of an adversary, and I am so firmly convinced that 
no scientific fact of acknowledged truth can be at vari¬ 
ance with any spiritual truth of revelation, that I should 
be both foolish and ashamed not to quote them side by side. 

If I were to express my indebtedness to every source 
from which I have received help, suggestions, and in¬ 
spiration, this preface would be unduly prolonged. 
I am consciously (and beyond a doubt unconsciously in 
many cases) under obligations to many authors, to whom 
I have given credit in the proper places, wherever I have 
been aware of my debt. 

In conclusion, I may say that this little book has been 
written at the request of many, both believers and non¬ 
believers, who first heard the substance of it in a series 
of Lent lectures delivered in Trinity Church, New Or¬ 
leans. That the suggestions of these pages have been 
helpful to some is my ground for hope that they may be 
of use to others. It is evident to every serious student 
of modern life that Thomas the doubter prefers to be 
Thomas the believer. It is quite as evident that he 
must see a connection between the Facts and the Faith 
—the facts of life, of science, of history, of experience, 
and the Faith in Christ. 


PREFACE. 


XI 


Christ dealt with Thomas by saying, 16 Reach hither 
thy hand/’* The Master acknowledged the right of 
the man to doubt, and Thomas found the Lord through 
that outburst of rationalism. 

While profoundly realizing what seems to be the neces¬ 
sity of establishing anew such a connection as this, the 
writer is sadly and humbly conscious of the awful nature 
of the task he has endeavored to perform. What 
preacher of Christ, indeed, can fail to feel himself un¬ 
worthy to handle sacred things ? Dealing with the m) r s- 
teries of God, how far short we must inevitably fall of 
the reality ! When we have entered the Life Eternal, 
how much of what we have spoken and written will we 
not wish to have left unsaid and unexpressed ! 

And yet as we press onward, peering (not curiously, 
but for light) into the veiled knowledge of the many 
mansions, we are assured that there, at least, is our 
Father’s House. And because He is our Father, we 
somehow believe that He would rather have us arise and 
go toward Him, even though we stumble on the way, 
than to have us settle down content in the far country 
of credulity, indifference, or wilful ignorance. 

Trinity Rectory, New Orleans, La. 


* John 20 : 27. 



CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

I 

The prime facts of Religion and Science—The common 
ground as set forth by Herbert Spencer—Abiogenesis an 
unscientific assumption—Testimony of scientists—Three 
subjects under the first article of the Creed : (a) A Crea¬ 
tor ; ( b ) a process of creation; ( c ) a lelationship between 
Creator and man—Where agnosticism parts company with 
Theism—The agnostic right on material grounds—God is 
known after another fashion—The moral consciousness de¬ 
mands a resting place—Science as well as religion teaches 
purpose in creation—What we know of the unknowable— 
The position of man—The process of creation a disputed 
question—Mechanical theory of inspiration the cause— 
Comparison of the parables of St. Luke with those of 
Genesis—Rational Christianity views Inspiration as a con¬ 
tinuous outflow of the divine—Creation itself the great 
miracle—Process of creation a secondary matter—Evolution 
a good working hypothesis—How Christianity may hold it 
—Relations of God and nature manifest in nature—Rela¬ 
tions of God and man only partially manifest—Man the 
climax of creation—His existence justified only by view¬ 
ing God as a Father—His ultimate, expressed in terms not 
found in nature—Man by himself a failure—As the child 
of God he finds interpretation—Fatherhood apprehended 
by faith, a scientific as well as spiritual fact. 

CHAPTER II. 

Science brings us to the verge of a chasm—Theism infers 
personality beyond—Christianity proclaims Father-God— 




XIV 


CONTENTS. 


Man must know the Father to know himself—Man’s his¬ 
torical attitude of interrogation—Christianity proposes 
Jesus Christ as the answer of the Father-God—( a ) The 
historical Person ; (fi) the Divine Being; ( c ) His relation¬ 
ship to man—Our immediate question is with the proba¬ 
bility of God revealing Himself—No dispute as to the his¬ 
torical Person—This human life is the only basis for our 
knowledge of the divine life—The idea of Incarnation not 
original with Christianity—The idea does not therefore 
traverse human expectation—Key of the mystery lies in 
Fatherhood—To quote scripture not sufficient—Rational 
ground must be sought—Scientific possibility of God dwell¬ 
ing in the flesh—Illustrations from the creation—Breaks 
in continuity of development—Man not perfect owing to 
moral nature—He interferes with development—Will not 
God bring man to perfection ?—The Incarnation an affirma¬ 
tive answer—Man seen to be not an isolate atom but the 
member of a family—The Only Son is the head of the Fam¬ 
ily—To Him all others must conform to fulfil their pur¬ 
pose and realize their destiny—Objections considered— 
God has always worked slowly—God is manifest in lower 
forms of life, shall He not be manifest in the higher ?—A 
Creator and a creation involves a relationship of under¬ 
standing—Man questions of God for more than food and 
clothes —The Only Son a type of other Sonship—In Him 
the chasm is bridged—Traditional Christianity confuses 
the question by treating Christ as an afterthought—His 
human progress a sacrifice to the crude spiritual ideas of 
man—His Incarnation inevitable had there been no cross 
—Our Lord a necessary sequence—The moral argument 
from the character of Christ—How the sceptic must be 
treated—To doubt is not to be damned—The testimony of 
Christ to Himself. 


CHAPTER III. 

The historical crux of the Christian position—The process of 
the Incarnation a stumbling-block to many—It may be 



CONTENTS. 


XV 


PAGE 

rationally apprehended—Purpose of this chapter not to 
prove the Virgin birth, but to set forth a rational view 
of considering it—The image of God refracted in all but 
the Only Son—Either God so manifested Himself, or men 
have constructed a perfect manifestation—In Him we know 
the Father—Statement of the facts of the birth—The laws 
of procreation have back of them the Source of life—Hux¬ 
ley on Parthenogenesis—Weissman—The scientific fact not 
pressed in this argument—Direct action of God in produc¬ 
ing life in His Creation—Variation of His working—The 
miracle of Creation greater than the miracle of Incarnation 
—God’s life accretes form from its environment—The new 
life spiritually transmitted as the old life is physically im¬ 
parted—Original creation by one parent—Purpose of this 
new creation— Perfection of the whole man, hitherto devel¬ 
oped only in mind and body—Spiritual life necessary to 
give purpose to other life—The achievements of Christ in 
human history—The new type of manhood—Our perma¬ 
nent relationship through Him with the Father—Relation 
of Incarnation to Parthenogenesis—Attitude of traditional 
theology—Suspicion of alternates to its own formularies— 
Shall a Unitarian “ without doubt perish everlastingly ?” 

—The mystery of the Incarnation not expressed in human 
language—The God-Father’s wish—His love must finally 
reach to the knowledge of men—The Christian answer is 
“ through Jesus Christ Our Lord”—Perhaps we may here¬ 
after see an expansion of this answer—God is in His world 
for those who do not recognize Him as well as for those 
who do—The bottom truth of Christianity is not a series 
of opinions but God’s Fatherhood—The Only Son is the 
head of a Family including Thomas with John. 32 

CHAPTER IV. 

Historical environment of Christianity—The Atonement— 

The fall of man and its results—The traditional view irra¬ 
tional—Christ’s coming a forethought—The added task of 
reconciliation—Atonement not substitution—The Godhead 



XVI 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

not divided by man’s sin—Atonement is man’s need— 
Modus vivendi necessary—Complication of sin—Heredity 
—Breakage of law taken into account—Man ignorant of 
his destiny—Knows God’s laws but not His love—Idea of 
propitiation—Man’s crude idea to which God accommo¬ 
dates Himself—Sacrifice is of the human will—Jesus the 
complete expression of this—The world’s Redeemer—Pro¬ 
cess of redemption—Christ’s sacrifice not physical but spir¬ 
itual—The cross stands for more than martyrdom—Vica¬ 
rious suffering a law of human progress—Christ dies not a 
part from, but as a part of, man—Materialism of popular 
conceptions of the blood of Christ—The cross an object 
lesson of God’s love—The world’s judgment of the Best— 

The reaction from the cross is man’s realization of the 
Atonement—Atonement not yet completed—Salvation to 
the uttermost—From Calvary dates the outward spiritual 
ascent of man—Further than this is still God’s secret—Re¬ 
demption a process of the ages—But not because Christ 
went forth to execution—Christ took all human experience 
to His bosom on the cross—The hard things of life are 
divine—The supreme lesson is the subjection of will in 
harmony with the divine—Christ’s redemption of the race 
possible because He is an epitome of the race—Not a magi¬ 
cal process, but the evolution of the man—no achievement 
without cost—The sons of God and heirs of eternal life_ 46 

CHAPTER V. 

Four propositions to be considered : (a) The place ; (&) the 
reason ; (c) what Christ did ; ( d ) the result—A place of 
departed spirits not peculiar to Christian doctrine—Greek’s 
and Jew’s teaching—Intermediate state of Christianity— 
Hades and Paradise—This existence as rational as any 
other state of being—Purgatory a perversion of the Cath¬ 
olic truth—Germ truth of purgatory—A revolt against 
doctrine of endless torment—Why Christ made the descent 
—To complete human experience—He must touch life at 
all points—What did He while there ?—Speculation as to 


CONTENTS. 


XVII 


the other world—It is certain from Scripture that Christ 
preached the Gospel there—St. Peter’s testimony—Tra¬ 
ditional theology disputes this because of its theory of no 
probation after death—Life not a probation but an educa¬ 
tion—Popular theory breaks into the purpose of God in 
creating man in His image—Brings His life in man to an 
end at the grave—Teaches despair beyond that point— 
Three kinds of a “ gospel' ’ might have been preached: 

( a) Information ; ( b) to hardened spirits incapable of re¬ 
pentance ; (c) denunciation of evil — Jesus never taught 
that death ends moral progress, but the contrary in the 
parable of Dives and Lazarus—The appeal taken from 
texts of Scripture to character of Christ and purpose of 
God in creation—God’s love—Christ will preach wherever 
He preaches, this good news—The results—Men who reject¬ 
ed God on earth may find Him beyond the grave—Truth 
is never dangerous—Anathemas do not “ run” in the spir¬ 
itual world—Three theories of future punishment, any one 
of which a Christian may hold : (a) Endless torment based 
on inaccurate translations of the authorized version, 
changed by the revisers—Christ’s explanation of eternal 
life—Life is knowledge—Death is ignorance—Position of 
English Church leaves it an open question—Rhetoric not 
logic—Endless torment is unscientific and unmoral—No 
man holds it true as concerning his own dead—( b) Condi¬ 
tional immortality, or the annihilation of the obdurately 
wicked— (c) Final victory of God through man in His uni¬ 
verse, when every enemy including disobedience is de¬ 
stroyed—The true theory of punishment—George Fox’s 
vision. 62 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Resurrection the prime historical fact of Christianity— 
Again the supernatural—A moral and rational necessity 
involved—Two sorts of evidence—The logical necessity for 
the Resurrection of Christ—Death not an ultimate in the 
natural world—The antecedent difficulty of a variation of 



XV111 


CONTENTS. 


law—Already considered in Creation and Incarnation—The 
Resurrection a lesser miracle than either—The persistence 
of life—Not an ordinary life—Man’s natural development 
carries him continually above earthly conditions—Life 
superior to death and therefore to the body which alone 
death attacks—Life the conceded master of its environment 
—The great miracles may be the obscured workings of a 
law not yet discovered—This redeems us from mechanical 
theories of God’s interference with His world—The spir¬ 
itual application of evolution a new revelation of God— 
The Resurrection a term in the evolutionary series—The 
cross standing alone a failure—Christ’s own teaching must 
be taken into account—Resurrection not irrational, but the 
expectation of all men—John Fiske’s testimony as to im¬ 
mortality—If Christ remained in the grave the Incarnation 
was incomplete—There would have been no light on im¬ 
mortality—The historical evidence—Man does not desire to 
doubt, but rightly demands evidence—The credibility of 
the miraculous—Huxley and Hume—Witnesses should be 
accorded fair treatment—Testimony of Greenleaf—Histori¬ 
cal appearances of Jesus after His death—Leslie’s test 
rules of evidence—How the facts stand their application— 
Belief in the Resurrection rational, philosophical, and his¬ 
torical-influence of Christ in the world rests upon a be¬ 
lief that He rose from the dead—Moral effect of this wit¬ 
nessed in history—His resurrection a prophecy of the 
resurrection of humanity—“ A supreme act of faith in the 
reasonableness of God’s works”.. 

CHAPTER VII. 

Return to earth not a completion of Christ’s destiny—The 
Only Son looks onward—The Ascension necessary to the 
Resurrection—Christ leads man to his ultimate place—His¬ 
torical details of Ascension not as perfect as of the Resur¬ 
rection—The fact is an inference of all New Testament 
writings—We are dealing with a unique being dwelling in 
a world beyond the realization of material man—Is the 



CONTENTS. 


XIX 


PAGE 

spiritual world a rational conception ?—Religious debt to 
science—Indications of the interpenetration of two worlds 
—The deaf and blind in the physical world—The illiterate 
and cultured in the intellectual world—The natural and 
spiritual worlds rational—Jesus saw and heard what His 
disciples could not—Illustrations of people approaching 
death—Telepathy—Vulgar use of spiritual facts—Testi¬ 
mony of science—Physical and spiritual worlds are coter¬ 
minous—Ascension not a departure from earth, but a 
“ withdrawal into” the spiritual world—Right hand of 
God a figurative expression—Christ must be somewhere 
correspondent to His environment—No such thing as 
“spent life”—No loss in the friction of the universe— 

The Faith here buttressed by the facts of science—Relig¬ 
ious teaching of the Ascension—Christ’s resumption of 
His proper place—He takes humanity with Him—The 
destiny of man to walk erect in the presence of God— 
This in the initial velocity of His creation—The soul moves 
in an ellipse from God to God —The unrest of humanity 
significant of this destiny—Christ enters the Holy Place, 
the Presence of God, bringing all men with Him—The As¬ 
cension an answer to the question “ Why ?”—God’s view 
of His children—The family idea of creation—Each one has 
his own place in the family circle. 102 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Christ’s deathless association with humanity — Once more He 
cometh to judge the quick and the dead—Man’s part in his 
redemption a real one—The ideal of the Asceusion is shat- 

' tered in us all—God is either wearied, or will come again 
in some way to man—The permanent relationship between 
God and man demands the latter—A final manifestation of 
this—A final contrast between good and evil, not to sepa¬ 
rate man from God, but to bring them together—Judgment 
of man a fearful thing—In the hands of Christ—The doc¬ 
trine a fundamental belief of early disciples—Expectation 
of Advent in their generation—They were not far wrong 



XX 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

—Second Advent does not stand alone—God has always 
been coming in judgment—Bishop Westcott on this— 
Christ’s judgments not one but many—An enlargement of 
traditional theory—Christ has not withdrawn Himself into 
space—His perpetual presence—From the spiritual world 
He breaks forth in judgment—Judgment lifts up as well 
as weighs—Destruction of Jerusalem an illustration—Other 
examples—Finality of judgment applies to dispensation — 

The earthly court-room fallacy—No “ last day” in sense of 
finality—Analogy of the old dispensation—This dispensa¬ 
tion will be judged also—Humanity will be purged and 
lifted up—Nature and scope of individual judgment— 
Judgment a rational expectation of mankind, both bad and 
good—The “ end of the world”—Destruction of conditions 
of human life, and persistence of life—Sin brings man to 
God for judgment—It cannot finally be in the universe— 

Its confinement to a certain space inconceivable—Sin an 
alien thing to be sloughed off—The judgment emphasizes 
this—Judgment necessary for God’s justification—Read¬ 
justment must be inherent in creation—Individual judg¬ 
ment to purify—Separation of good from evil the first, 
but not the final stage of the process—Destruction of evil, 
survival of good—Man goes to his own place —That place 
not necessarily perpetual—Yet sin will always be punished 
— man must receive for the deeds done in his body—Judg¬ 
ment will be upon character the aggregate of life’s ex¬ 
perience. 115 


CHAPTER IX. 

The third division of the Creed -The divine side of the prob¬ 
lem—Man has his part—He is not left to achieve his share 
alone—Not alone at any point—The promise of the Spirit 
—His office to interpret Christ—To guide men into all 
truth—A broad statement—Truth is one—God will explain 
His whole creation—The Spirit lifts us to God—Truth not 
always its own interpreter—The Spirit of life not a new 
thought—Our vague apprehension—We have met the 



CONTENTS. 


xxi 


PAGE 

Spirit (a) in creation ; (jb) in the Incarnation—Operation of 
the Spirit not narrowed to any special channel—Human 
misapprehension of human powers—The Holy Ghost the 
inspiration of humanity—Man is not alone—Chaos a pro¬ 
cess, not a finality—Through the Spirit man becomes con¬ 
scious of his divine endowment—Vain speculation as to 
the Trinity—Creed deals with facts as distinguished from 
opinions—The three fundamental phenomena of the Creed, 
Father, Son, and Spirit—Historical gift of the Spirit—Ex¬ 
ample of epochal moments—Strange sights and sounds of 
Pentecost—The marvel not in the details but the fact— 
Miraculous underlies historical development—Pentecost 
marks a new world within the observation of historians— 
Miracle of the first Christian century—The Spirit created 
nothing, but acted upon what was—How ?—'The Life 
abides in man as in nature, bringing both to perfection— 

In man the Spirit is conscious of interference—Life a strug¬ 
gle between two forces—The power “not ourselves” is 
God by His Spirit working in man—Man may or may not 
use this endowment—It demands receptivity—The practice 
of good—God comes through our contact with others—In¬ 
spiration the same to-day as in the first century—The de¬ 
nial of this is a partial view of God—Its realization brings 
God and man closer together—Inspiration is the constant 
object of prayer—The mark of the Spirit on all true effort... 133 

CHAPTER X. 

The letters forming a word have no divine significance— 

The Apostolic Church marks its continuity—The tests of 
doctrine, fellowship, and documents—Men crave authority 
for religious as for all other truths—This article of the 
Creed not a thing apart from the rest—The Church is the 
earthly body of the Spirit in the religious realm—The 
Spirit manifests itself in form—Otherwise we know it not 
—This does not narrow the Spirit’s working—It is not con¬ 
fined to this channel—The Church a working instrument 
of the Incarnation—An organism like the state—Compari- 


xxii 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

son of the two—Notes of the Church—It is One—A fam¬ 
ily—One in its ideal while torn in practice—Denomina¬ 
tional names have local and historical value—We are not 
baptized into these names but the one Name—What we 
mean by “ being an Episcopalian”—The religious ideal is 
to be a son of God—The Church is holy in its ideal, in its 
practice—It has ever, on the whole, been a savor of life in 
the world—It is holy because of its Founder—The con¬ 
fession of Peter in the Divinity, not Peter, is its rock—The 
Church is Catholic in the sense of time, as to the truth it 
holds, as toward all men, in its practical grasp upon all 
human achievement—Christian institutions have been the 
instruments of preserving and propagating the influence 
of Jesus—The transmission of spiritual life no more mys¬ 
terious than of physical life—The Church to-day is organ¬ 
ized effort for good—It becomes men to be a part of this 
organism... 150 


CHAPTER XI. 

Vague apprehension of the truth taught in this article—The 
reason appears to be because no duties flow from it—It is 
a declaration of fact inhering in other truths combined—It 
is a corollary of the family of God—It corresponds to 
needs of humanity—Materialism of the age seems to be 
against this—Christian supernaturalism looked upon with 
suspicion—Human nature demands a degrading compro¬ 
mise—Vulgar spiritualism—Meaning of the article—The 
inner manifestation of the life of the Church—A realization 
of Fatherhood and Brotherhood—The kingdom both visi¬ 
ble and invisible—Past and present—Includes the living 
and the dead—The saints are the truth seekers—Analogy 
of the communion of natural saints—Modern life bound 
up with the past—The living are in active fellowship with 
the dead—Examples—The communion of all who have 
striven or are striving to work out the God idea—The 
dead and living integral parts of one family—The article a 
protest against dropping one’s dead out of sight—Much 



CONTENTS. 


xxiii 


PAGE 

Christian faith is actual infidelity—Because we fear to real¬ 
ize our whole heritage—We may believe that our own dead 
are working under God with us—The article teaches that 
the family of God is not permanently divided—The feast 
of the Communion of All Saints emphasizes this. 166 

CHAPTER XII. 

Consciousness of sin seems to separate us from the comfort 
of the Creed—Failure and indifference—This article con¬ 
nects present conditions with ultimate facts—Sin taken 
into account—It is an unnatural state—It has underlain all 
life, however—The Prodigal a child of all nations—Sin in 
principle is a traversing of the divine purpose—Punish¬ 
ment not an arbitrary but natural result—Retribution a 
better word—Legal penalties not natural—Reaping and 
sowing the law of retribution—It is a truth of science, of 
the social organism, and rationally, a truth of religion— 
What is man’s hope ?—Nature knows no forgiveness, nor 
society—Jesus Christ the Friend of sinners—The wage of 
sin and the gift of God—Forgiveness not release from 
retribution, but redemption back into the family—It in¬ 
volves two things : man’s return and God’s going forth to 
meet him—Forgiveness the triumph of the Incarnation— 
Restores the perfect relationship—Makes a way across the 
gulf—Foreshadowed in the story of the Fall—But why 
evil in the world at all ?—Evil a condition of possessing 
moral freedom—God could not help Himself—Difference 
between human life and beast life with no moral quality— 
This difference involves possibility of disobedience, but 
also glory of obedience under stress—Over against this is 
something—The Incarnation not an afterthought—The 
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world—Forgiveness 
involved in creation. 179 


CHAPTER XIII. 

Principle of resurrection discussed in previous chapters— 
Faith in our own resurrection based on the historical fact 




xxiy 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

of Christ’s rising on the third day—Difference between the 
two—Spiritual body a mystery—Christ a unique person— 

The perfect man entered at once upon his heritage—Im¬ 
perfect men must go through a process—Immortality al¬ 
ways connected with some conception of resurrection 
of body—Egyptian embalming an illustration—Christ 
brought this vague hope to light—We are to live here¬ 
after as ourselves—This article opposes (a) re-incarnation, 
which is practical annihilation; ( b ) Nirvana, which is 
sleep, not life ; (c) phantom existence—The word “ body” 
involves a confusion of thought—Not to be interpreted 
literally—The resurrection of this flesh unscientific, irra¬ 
tional, and unscriptural—A definition of terms—Material¬ 
ism of scriptural language—Body means “ identity”—Per¬ 
sonality the supreme fact of manhood—We distinguish 
each other by our bodies—In human language the body is 
the man—Resurrection of the body is the resurrection of 
the personality—But there is a spiritual body which per¬ 
petuates identity—Appearances of Jesus—Death of lower 
forms a condition of life in higher forms—The seed an¬ 
alogy of St. Paul—Continuity of life not of atoms—Hav¬ 
ing borne the image of the earthy we shall also bear the 
image of the heavenly—The spiritual body is adaptation 
to environment—This article teaches further that resur¬ 
rection is expansion of life—We are often hampered here 
by our bodily limitations—The inequality of opportunity 
—Divine unrest with earthly conditions not confined to 
one class—God loses no part of human endeavor for truth 
—Recognition a corollary of resurrection—Our Lord’s an¬ 
swer to the Sadducees—Recognition here is by no means 
perfect—There it will be instinctive—Resurrection crys¬ 
tallizes the dream of immortality. 195 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Summary of the faith outlines the progress of the human 
soul—The drawing up of humanity into the divine—We 
shall rise again to what ?—It must be the life in which 



CONTENTS. 


XXV 


Christ now dwells—Eternal life does not primarily mean 
duration of time—Distinction between quality and dura¬ 
tion not whimsical—Christ’s definition of Eternal Life as 
knowledge of God—It is, therefore, a present possession— 

No man, however, has it perfectly—How man gains this 
knowledge in practice- -God has purpose in man—To real¬ 
ize this purpose perfectly is eternal life—To realize it in 
part is the state of a truth-seeker—Examples of the increase 
in our knowledge of God—Harvey, Jenner, Newton, Frank¬ 
lin, etc.—But this only in part—Every man is God’s man 
revealing God, who helps others to see the Father—To 
know God is to perform our duty as sons—We can do this 
only through Jesus Christ—In Him we see God dealing 
perfectly with human life—Knowledge of God must in¬ 
clude the Incarnation—Character is one manifestation of 
Eternal Life—Goodness the ultimate of all Creed teaching 
—Distinction between religion and morality—Human na¬ 
ture demands Eternal Life as the satisfaction of a need—In 
our ignorance we perceive dimly the glory of achievement 
—The discontent of earth environment—The perishable 
nature of temporal possessions—This alike the burden of 
the prophet and the scientist—No man is content with 
dissolving views—To know God is to know ourselves be¬ 
yond the limitations of time and earth—This is eternal 
life—The pagan instinct to be with his gods—The Chris¬ 
tian aspiration to be in his own place—Immortality a larger 
word than forever—Conclusion.211 




















THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


CHAPTER I. 

ORIGINS—CREATION AND SONSHIP. 

“ I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and 
Earth.” Apostles' Greed. 

” In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. So 
God created man in His own image.” Gen. 1:1, 27. 

“ There will remain the one absolute certainty that he is ever 
in presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all 
things proceed.” Herbert Spencer. 

The prime fact of religious apprehension is God. 
All things contained in creeds, confessions, articles of 
faith, are but dependents upon this one great fact. The 
Theist may not have all of the truth in detail, but he 
holds it all in germ. It is in God we live and move and 
have our being. It is in the application of God to life 
that schools of theology have arisen. The first article 
of the creeds of Christendom contains the truth ex¬ 
pressed in all other articles. 

It is important to have this clearly in mind, for it is 
the common platform of the human race, whatsoever 
their further religious thoughts or opinions may be. 



2 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


We are now seeking elemental truths. This is the ele¬ 
mental truth of religion. 

On the other hand, the prime fact of what is called 
Science is the source of life, the origin of things as they 
are. With processes of development, men have found 
themselves, through certain inspired interpreters, quite 
competent to deal. With Life in its genesis, the scien¬ 
tific materialist finds his great problem. The high 
priest of the scientific hierarchy, Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
makes his confession of this prime fact, both of religion 
and science, in significant language. “ Amid the mys¬ 
teries which become the more mysterious the more they 
are thought about, there will remain the one absolute 
certainty, that he (man) is ever in presence of an Infinite 
and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.”* 

And in the context the great agnostic, “ forced,” as 
he believes himself to be, into agnosticism, yet “ feels 
compelled to think there must be an explanation.” 

Haeckel, who is far more of a materialist than Spen¬ 
cer, thus vaguely refers to the same inscrutable Source 
which has eluded the searchings of the human intellect. 
“ We can, therefore, from these general outlines of the 
inorganic history of the earth’s crust, deduce the impor¬ 
tant fact that at a certain definite time life had its be¬ 
ginning on earth, and that terrestrial organisms did not 
exist from eternity, but at a certain period came into 
existence for the first time.”f 

Huxley, advancing beyond this declaration, says : 
“ The fact is that at the present moment there is not a 
shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis 


* Note 1, p. 223. 


f Note 2, p. 223. 


ORIGINS—CREATION AND SONSHIP. 


3 


(the growth of the living from the lifeless) does take 
place or has taken place within the period during which 
the existence of life on the globe is recorded.”* 

I do not mean to draw any strained or unfair infer¬ 
ences from these statements, such as their authors would 
disavow. I quote them to show that as regards origins, 
rational Christianity and honest agnosticism have very 
much in common. Abiogenesis is a scientific may le 
only. The testimony of every scientific man of emi¬ 
nence is (however reluctantly) given against the theory. 
The solemn declaration of Herbert Spencer, facile prin- 
ceps of non-Christian philosophers, substantiates the 
Theistic position. With these words, spiritually speak¬ 
ing, the agnostic stops, but he has settled in his own 
language the first article of the Apostles’ Creed, with 
the omission of the word Father. 

From this point the agnostic and Theist part com¬ 
pany. It would seem that, having so much in common, 
they should know each other better. 

The article of the Creed under consideration involves 
three propositions : a Creator ; a Process of Creation ; 
a Relationship between the Creator and Man as the 
chief end of creation. 

The first proposition meets with practically no denial 
on either hand. As the Christian begins to explain and 
interpret, however, he is met by a denial that seems to 
leave no further room for argument. This Infinite 
Eternal Energy is unknowable. We come up to the 
abyss and look over, but we look into mists and clouds. 
If we call across the chasm there is no answer. The 


* Note 3, p. 224. 


4 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


Earth and Man with their endowments have proceeded, 
but nothing else proceeds from the unknowable source. 
The womb of time is either barren or forever closed. 
The Energy is either exhausted or has turned itself into 
other channels. Whatever It has been or is—across that 
chasm to the brink of which we are led by the seers of 
material science, broods in silence and darkness, the 
Great Unknowable. 

Now Christianity has much in common even with this 
position of the agnostic. ‘ ‘ Canst thou by searching 
find out God ?”* is answered in the negative not only 
by Zophar, but by the Christian intellect of all the ages. 

The agnostic is right in declaring that God is unknow¬ 
able in terms of material science, but is he right when, 
leaving his own peculiar realm, he proclaims that because 
God cannot be found and known by the scalpel and the 
scales. He cannot be found and known after another 
but quite as real a fashion ? Is there not an apprehen¬ 
sion of God, even while admittedly there is no compre¬ 
hension ? 

The intellect demands a resting-place and finds it in a 
First Cause, the prime fact of science. 

But the feelings, affections, conscience, demand a 
resting-place no less imperiously, no less rationally—not 
merely in a First Cause, but in a continuous cause, with 
continuous moral, personal, and intelligent relations 
with men. 

We see the First Cause to be the author of life. But 
this is not all. We see this Life to be guided with pur¬ 
pose as it fills the veins and courses through the arteries 


* Job 11: 7. 


ORIGINS—CREATION AND SONSHIP. 


5 


of earth and man. It is Life with design, that is some¬ 
thing ; but Life with good and intelligent design, that 
is something more. 

It is an old and trite inference that is deduced from 
all this. We do not need the first chapters of Genesis 
to tell us in allegorical story that Some One in the be¬ 
ginning made the heavens, and the earth, and man ; 
Some One who was Almighty and infinite, as well as in¬ 
visible ; Some One who prepared earth for the habitation 
of intelligent creatures, into whose control and under 
whose dominion He placed it. Darwin and Tyndall and 
Agassiz and hosts of others have told us this, and have 
even described the process by which it was done. This 
is a great deal to know about an Unknowable One. The 
Eternal Energy is not blind force at all events, but indi¬ 
cates by every law or inference known to man—by the 
laws and inferences which men acknowledge in other 
realms than the spiritual—Intelligent, Moral Purpose. 

This will do to begin with. Let the agnostic think 
what seems best to him about the word Father in the 
Creed ; let it stand for the time being as a Christian 
gloss upon the scientific text. It does not weaken the 
meaning of the rest of the phrase, and we may now use 
the word God in its simplest signification, without 
offence or misunderstanding. 

God and the world ! the Creator and His Creation 
under many names and actualities of subdivisions : rock, 
plant, creeping thing, flying thing, walking thing, Man— 
Man differentiated from other animals, with affections, 
feelings, passions, will, intellect, and, chiefest of all, a 
moral nature which forces him to use the word ought in 
his relations with his fellows, even with the crust of the 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


earth and the earth itself, with its treasures hidden and 
uncovered. 

We have next to ponder the process of this creation, 
which is the second proposition of the article of the 
Creed under consideration. 

Here, again, science and traditionalism are at odds, 
hut, again, it is from a misunderstanding. This mis¬ 
understanding is largely the creation of traditional the¬ 
ology, while its perpetuation is due to the slowness with 
which men realize that the brazen serpent of the desert, 
even when first uplifted by God, may become nelmshtan , 
a poor brass thing, only worth being ground into 
powder, without force, without inspiration, an anachro¬ 
nism.* 

Such is the mechanical theory of the plenary inspira¬ 
tion of the Scriptures upon which is reared the theologi¬ 
cal structure of the traditional creation of earth and 
man. 

That God made the universe in six days of twenty- 
four hours each is a proposition which has few modern 
supporters. That He called into operation the literal 
machinery of the first chapters of Genesis for the crea¬ 
tion of man and woman, with their consequent disobedi¬ 
ence and expulsion from the garden, is still honestly 
believed and passionately maintained by perhaps a major¬ 
ity of the Christian world. Science has been listened 
to concerning the time occupied in bringing earth and 
man out of the formless void of the beginning, but 
science is scouted when it applies the words legend, 
allegory, or parable, to the Garden of Eden and the 
tragedy thereof. 


* 2 Kings 18 : 4. 


ORIGINS—CREATION AND SONSHIP. 


7 


To the devout Christian mind there is nothing incon¬ 
gruous in Jesus teaching the deepest spiritual mysteries 
of God and the human soul by a parable. Why should 
it be thought blasphemous to believe that God has 
taught us by a parable of the purely physical mysteries 
of the genesis of man ? The fifteenth chapter of St. 
Luke is not literal history, but parable. The first 
chapters of Genesis, may they not be parables also with¬ 
out detracting from their inspiration or their essential 
truth ? 

This is the position of rational Christianity. It 
teaches that the inspiration of God is not a completed 
quantity, but a continuous outflow into His creation; 
that so far from having begun with the establishment of 
a canon of Scriptures or disappeared with the early gen¬ 
eral councils, it has been of old, and has gathered in 
volume and intensity with the generations since One 
taught that the Holy Spirit should come to guide men 
into all truth. The form of the truth is a mere detail. 

Wherever truth is taught, whether in books, in insti¬ 
tutions, in rock formation, or in the record of man’s ex¬ 
perience, it is taught not as words and symbols, but by 
means of words and symbols. 

Any other story than that recorded in Genesis might 
have conveyed the same truth to us : God as the author 
of earth, the source of life, the lord of man. The im¬ 
agery of dust of the earth and rib of man ; of serpent 
and tree ; of forbidden fruit and fig-leaves ; of shamed 
manhood and flaming swords of cherubim : all this must 
bear the same relation to the lesson it teaches, that the 
two sons and the Father ; the homestead and the swine 
pasture ; the rags and the ring; the father’s kiss and 


8 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


the elder brother’s anger, bear to the spiritual teaching 
of the parable of the Prodigal Son. 

The great miracle (using popular language to express 
God’s most natural dealing with His own work) is not 
the process of creation upon which traditional theology 
lays such stress, but the fact of creation.* The supreme 
truth we are taught in the Creed, as the first fact for 
man to learn in his attempt to solve the problem of his 
life, is that God made him ; that once there was a 
time when there was no life on this then mass of inert 
matter called earth, and that suddenly life came ; that 
later on there was another inrush from the divine 
Energy, and to physical life was added psychical life, 
and man, who before had been an animal, became a liv¬ 
ing soul. 

This, I repeat, is the real miracle. This is the secret 
that has eluded the patient searching of the cleverest 
and profoundest intellect. This is the one secret of the 
universe apparently incommunicable. 

The quarrel of traditional theology with science has 
not been upon the main question at all, but upon a side 
issue—namely, the process of creation. 

As though it made the smallest possible difference 
with our spiritual being how God made this earth and 
brought man to his present stage of development. The 
mode or process of creation is an interesting question, 
but not one of fundamental importance. 

The traditional view of the creation is based upon a 
literal interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis. It 
is slow to give way to the scientific theory, because, un- 


Note 4, p. 225. 


ORIGINS—CREATION AND SONSHIP. 


9 


fortunately, certain other theories of God’s relations to 
man and man’s attitude to God have become identified 
with the literal story of the Garden of Eden, and many 
people do not see how they can give up the one without 
giving up the other. Reason bids them discard the 
husks, while traditionalism declares that in so doing 
they will crush the kernel beyond recognition. 

The scientific view of the creation, as expressed in the 
evolutionary theory, is by no means a perfect solution of 
all the problems that arise out of a study of the genesis 
and development of earth and man. It is, however, a 
good working hypothesis, and it seems to be at present 
man’s most perfect apprehension of “ God in His world.” 

The point I wish to make here is, that so long as we 
have the acknowledgment of God at the beginning, send¬ 
ing the first current or planting the first germ of life, it 
matters not at all how that current flows or that germ 
develops. There is no religious significance in a pro¬ 
cess, save as it calls us to adore more reverently the Being 
from whom all things proceed. It is not in my purpose 
to dwell upon the theory of evolution beyond noting two 
points : First, the theory is not necessarily either athe¬ 
istic or irreligious, and is held by a large and increasing 
number of Christian scholars and disciples as the most 
probable process of divine working. Second, whether 
the theory is true or false, or partly true and partly 
false, there is nothing in its denial on the one hand, or 
acceptance on the other, to affect in the smallest degree 
the spiritual truth of the Christian Creed. To many, 
indeed, it is a further revelation of the glory of God, 
and by its teaching they seem to be put in closer rela¬ 
tions with a Personal Being whose work, on howsoever 


10 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


grand and marvellous scale, does not drop the individual 
out of account as an isolate atom, but includes him as 
an important factor in that “ far-off divine event toward 
which the whole creation moves.” 

We believe in God Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
earth. How he made them is a detail which encourages 
an honorable curiosity, but does not concern an honest 
religious faith. 

Rational Christianity and material science may here 
walk hand in hand. Asa Gray and Dr. McCosh are 
linked with Spencer, Darwin, and Fiske. 

We advance to the third proposition, which is the rela¬ 
tion of God to man. 

The relation of God to the rest of His creation on 
earth is manifest in Creation. Every corner of it bears 
fruit after its kind, or issues into some form of life 
moulded by its primary endowments. God’s relation to 
a rose-tree is evident. His intention is expressed in the 
bloom. His life through that channel breaks into the 
beauty and fragrance of the rose. When it has blos¬ 
somed through the Spring and Summer months, giving 
pleasure to God and man alike (for God’s image in man 
must make them near kin in their joys), and realized its 
eternal rose-life in the seeds which give it a continuous 
larger life, the stalk dies down, and the useless petals 
and decaying leaves go back into the earth—not anni¬ 
hilated, but to reappear in some other form, to the end¬ 
less praise and glory of the Creator. This is God’s will 
concerning, and His relationship to, the rose. So in 
regard to all of His creation, save man. There is no 
loss, no ultimate decay, no stultification of Himself in 
anything He has made. We see purpose in it all. 


ORIGIN'S—CREATION- AUD SONEHIP. 


11 


But man has evidently been the flower of His crea¬ 
tion. To him it has been given to dominate the earth, 
to control all other life, to subdue his enemies, wrest 
treasure from the bowels of the earth, and draw har¬ 
nessed power from the firmament. Man has justified 
his creation so far, and so far God’s relation to him as 
an agent in dealing with the physical universe has been 
abundantly manifested. 

But this is not the whole of the story. The Creed, 
voicing the cry of the human in all ages, establishes a 
relationship not inherent with plant or animal; unknown 
to the crucibles of science, and unreal in the ears of the 
agnostic, when it declares, “ I believe in God the 
Father.” 

And this cry across the chasm before which the agnos¬ 
tic stands mute, is exactly scientific and philosophical. 

The Eternal Energy, who has shadowed Himself as a 
Creator in the universe, with an eternal connection with 
the ultimate of every created thing; who has shown 
Himself to dwell in a real sense in every part of His 
creation by that potency of life which causes all things 
to come to fruitage after their kind : this God must 
have an eternal connection with the highest as well as 
with the lowest forms of His creation. 

The animal has his needs, his potencies, and so far as 
can be observed, his life fulfils itself, realizes its purpose 
on the earth. The earth and the contents thereof all 
are justified of their Creator, as in the case of the rose- 
tree. 

With man, the latest development of God’s life in the 
world, we are dealing with another sort of being. Man 
thinks, loves, hates, suffers, rejoices, moves freely upon 


12 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


the rest of creation, has the idea embraced in the word 
“ ought’ * as a part of his endowment, in every corner of 
the universe he can reach. 

But the earth and all its fulness, nay, even such frag¬ 
ments of the universe as he has spanned and drawn into 
his service, do not satisfy him, and are not competent 
for the complete manifestation and realization of him¬ 
self. He has a life that transcends the physical con¬ 
ditions of his environment. The potency of human life 
is not exhausted on material phenomena. The man de¬ 
mands for his completion what the earth does not hold. 
In other words, man is a germ whose final development 
is not realized in space and time. There is no ultimate 
for him in human sight, and yet he is the finest and 
highest manifestation of God’s life in time. 

Unless God has stultified Himself in His best work, 
there must he an ultimate somewhere for man. But 
man cannot be referred to the dust of the earth, for he 
is its master. Man’s explanation, therefore, can be 
found only in his Source. Every human life, con¬ 
sciously or unconsciouly, is an interrogation of God, its 
author. The interrogation may be forced out by pain 
or drawn out by love, the cry of a bewildered heart, or 
the curious questioning of a restless mind ; but all ap¬ 
peals away from earth and man, sobs, groans, defiances, 
pa3ans, are to God, as the Responsible Source of the man 
who weeps and laughs, who sins and sorrows, who doubts 
and believes. 

This God must be a Father or a stupid and blind force, 
for He has called into being and set going powers that 
will be Frankenstein monsters if they cannot be Sons. 

Men somehow have resented being monsters, and have 


ORIGINS—CREATION AND SONSIIIP. 


13 


realized, however vaguely and blindly, at times and in 
places, that they are sons. Therefore the Creed, not 
merely of the Christian, but of the man, declares faith 
in G-od to be faith in the Father. 

If the Creeds were blotted out to-morrow, we would 
formulate this first article by instinct, for human nature 
by itself is a failure. History tells it. Every day’s ex¬ 
perience declares it. Human nature wandering on the 
face of the earth like dog-nature, with no ultimate but 
dog burial—even the agnostic does not believe in that. 
He is honest enough when he confesses his ignorance of 
Cod and immortality, but he knows his is not dog- 
nature, and his life is an interrogation, too, with always 
more of hope and faith in it than of despair and doubt, 
I believe. 

Human nature by itself.! men and women incomplete, 
half blind, ignorant—there is no meaning to it; but 
human nature as a part of divine nature, the offspring 
of infinite power thrilled with infinite love—this is an¬ 
other thing. 

Man in the world with his incompleteness, conflicts, 
misunderstandings, blunders, his noblenesses and mean¬ 
nesses, his capacity for high and noble things, and, on 
the other hand, for low and ignoble things—this creature 
is only understandable as he is referred back to the 
Father Cod who is educating him. The Cod Father is 
an interpretation of this creature of His, or there is no 
interpretation. Man sees himself and others take knowl¬ 
edge of him, only in part. Human pain, human mis¬ 
ery, human disappointment, human sins even, are not 
the whole man at any time, although men deliver judg¬ 
ment upon such fragments, but are parts of the whole 


14 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


man, who is not his own, but God’s. I believe in God 
the Father, because Father and Son is the only rela¬ 
tionship between G-od and man which is either philo¬ 
sophical or logical in a universe of logic and order. 

Fatherhood explains poverty, pain, evil, death itself, 
as having their uses, although we cannot see the use. 
To have these things as parts of an existence for which 
we are not responsible, would be horrible indeed, unless 
there were an ultimate. This is why the Church of 
God, taught by Jesus of Nazareth, and in other tongues 
by the priests of modern science, bridges the chasm where 
the agnostic and materialist halt, dumb and puzzled. 

Across that gulf is the source of life, the shaper of 
purpose, the arbiter of destiny, the One who, having 
confessedly created all things, is morally responsible for 
all things. That One must be Divine love, the Father 
of man, as He is Divine love, a Father to the earth. 

He cannot be known ! 

Hands cannot touch Him. He does not exist in 
terms like that. The agnostic stands mute before a 
mystery, but a mystery to the physical laboratory. The 
spirit of a man transcends the laboratory, as a mother’s 
tears transcend the physical salts that image them. It 
acknowledges the same mystery, but while declaring 
that God is unknowable in some terms, it feels that He 
is knowable in others. 

This is an act of faith which has its counterpart in 
Spencer’s “It is absolutely certain that we are in the 
presence of an Infinite Eternal Energy from which all 
things proceed . 99 For this declaration of the philosopher 
is the very audacity of faith. It lays hold upon the 
things that are unseen as the necessary corollaries of 


ORIGINS—CREATION AND SONSHIP. 


15 


the things that are seen. The faith of the tlieist, even 
the faith of the Christian, takes no farther steps than 
this, only in another direction. 

Fatherhood is as necessary a scientific characterization 
of God, because of what man discovers in himself, as 
Infinite Eternal Energy is from what man discovers in 
the material universe.* 

God has shown Himself in relation to the physical 
earth by bringing order and harmony out of its primal 
chaos and confusion. 

God must show Himself in relation to the moral uni¬ 
verse by bringing moral order and beauty out of the 
present tangle of misery, cross-purposes, unwisdom, and 
ugliness of human nature. That moral evolution is 
going along with physical evolution cannot be denied, 
but to what purpose unless there be a moral force in the 
universe, but not of it, a moral being from whom all 
things, including things moral and spiritual, proceed, 
and to which they all tend ? 

God has so taught this man fashioned in His own im¬ 
age and endowed with a fragment of His divine life, 
that the man has found the right answer to the eternal 
question of the human soul. God has so shown Him¬ 
self in relation to man, that the man recognizes his 
Father in his God. God has so interpreted man to 
earth, earth to man, and Himself to both, that men will 
one day lift themselves from the couch of despair and 
distress, to see that the new creation is the blossom of 
the old, and again in its far-off fruitage, as in the be¬ 
ginning in its germ, God and man will see that all is 
very good. 

* Note 5, p. 225. 


CHAPTER II. 


god’s ideal of SONSHIP—THE INCARNATION-. 

“ And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord.” 

Apostles' Greed. 

“ God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” 

2 Cor. 5 : 19. 

“In presenting Jesus Christ to you as Christians believe on 
Him, I must necessarily present to you one who, though human, 
is yet what is called miraculous and supernatural. It will be 
my endeavor so to interpret these words ‘ supernatural * and 
‘ miraculous’ as to make it apparent that the supernatural in 
Jesus Christ is not unnatural, and the miraculous is not the ‘ re¬ 
versal ’ or the ‘ suspension ’ of nature ; rather that Jesus Christ 
incarnate is the legitimate climax of natural development, so that 
the study of nature—if only in that term moral nature is included 
—is the true preparation for welcoming the Christ.” 

Charles Gore. 

Science brings ns to the verge of a chasm where we 
are halted. The Eternal Energy is beyond, but is un¬ 
knowable in the terms so far employed. Theism clothes 
this Unknown in the garb of intelligent personality. In 
doing so theism is exactly scientific after the fashion of 
Mr. Spencer, who, from certain conditions, by faith 
infers an “ infinite eternal energy from which all things 
proceed.” The Theist from certain other conditions 
by faith infers personal, moral intelligence as the name 


god’s IDEAL OF SOHSHIP—THE LtfCAKJSTATIOH. 17 

of this energy, and utters the word God. The Chris¬ 
tian, by a similar process, still, by faith, proclaims 
Father God, or God the Father Almighty, maker of 
heaven and earth. 

Right science and right religion have, therefore, a 
common ultimate, which may be rationally approached 
at least in the language of the first article of the Apos¬ 
tles’ Creed. But the chasm is there as yet unbridged. 
The beast of the earth stops on the brink and browses 
satisfied. The creeping thing sniffs an empty void and 
crawls away content. The bird poises its wings for no 
forward flight. The plant drinks in its ultimate revela¬ 
tion of God on this side the abyss. 

But what of man ? 

He has no final interpretation of himself in the exist¬ 
ence that completes itself here, unconnected with the 
Father, who is yet only vaguely apprehended. Merely as 
a material atom he is something of an absurdity if the 
purpose of his earthly existence is measured in six feet 
by two of soil. As a moral atom he is a diabolical con¬ 
trivance indeed if the answer to his soul’s interrogation 
is dust and ashes. 

Man must somehow cross that chasm to get a knowl¬ 
edge of the Father, which instinctively he feels will be 
a knowledge of himself. If stones, wood, and mortar 
could think and draw inferences, they might be able to 
interpret the confused mass gathered about a foundation 
wall, if only they could get a glimpse of the architect’s 
mind. 

The history of human speculation tells us some things 
as well as the experiments of human laboratories. His¬ 
torically man has always been straining to cross the 


18 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


chasm ; straining liis ears to catch some voice ; crying 
himself hoarse with articulate and inarticulate groans. 
An altar to the unknown God has gathered multitudes 
of worshippers in every age. 

This is not unnatural, but reasonable. Science has 
been revealing more and more how reasonable, for it 
declares that we are in the presence of an Energy in¬ 
finite and eternal from which all things proceed. 

From this eternal procession the lower forms of life 
have drawn for their needs and been satisfied. 

Is man a less thing in the sight of God than the crea¬ 
tion, which man, in obedience to the law of his life, has 
subdued ? 

Side by side all men stand in the certain knowledge 
that alone they cannot bridge the chasm and find God. 
What then ? To know of a Father does not suffice. 
We must know the Father Himself or perish in our 
ignorance. Rational Christianity proposes an answer 
in the first section of the second article of the Apostles’ 
Creed. 

“ I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord.” 
He is the answer to the human cry for knowledge. He 
is (somehow) God in man revealing the one to the other 
and (somehow) uniting the one to the other. He is 
mediator, interpreter, that mode of Eternal Energy 
which, expressed in human terms, can truly manifest 
God to man. Three things are included in this state¬ 
ment—an historical Person ; a Divine Being ; His rela¬ 
tionship to man. 

The question for our immediate consideration is not 
as to the details of the Incarnation, the Virgin birth, or 
the divine and human working of the Atonement, but 


GOD’S IDEAL OF SONSHIP—THE IHCARHATIOH. 19 

the primary probability of God revealing Himself 
so clearly to man, as that in the revelation man should 
find a satisfactory answer to the questions whence, why, 
and whither ; the rationalism of God (somehow) in man 
reconciling the world to Himself ; the naturalness, in 
the evolution of God’s purpose in earth and man, of the 
One whom we call in Christian nomenclature the Son 
of God, but who more often called Himself the Son of 
Man. 

My proposition is that because Jesus the Christ was 
what we have termed a supernatural being. He was, in 
the natural order of creation, the highest of the series 
originated, so far as earth is concerned, in the first 
breath of God that swept over the chaos of matter. 

The Historical Person. 

Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, called Christ, as a 
human being who lived nearly nineteen hundred years 
ago, and about whose teachings and the occurrences of 
His earthly career have grown up the structure and doc¬ 
trine of the Christian Church, there is little need of 
argument. Differences of opinion about Him there 
have been and are, but as to His historical existence 
there is no dispute. As to what He was, men con¬ 
fusedly debate, but that He was, no one whose opinion 
is worth taking into account denies. It must be noted 
here as of great importance, however, that this unques¬ 
tioned human life is the only basis for our knowledge of 
a divine life. The divinity of Jesus, whatever that may 
mean, is a meaningless expression apart from the human 
person Jesus of Nazareth, who was subject to His 
parents, and increased in knowledge and in stature and 
in favor with God and man. 


20 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


We must begin with the acknowledgment that if God 
is to reveal Himself to man, it must be as man. He 
could not become rock or tree, could He become flesh ? 
God is unknowable to man, unless as man. 

The Divine Being. 

This idea was not and is not the exclusive possession 
of Christianity. Pagan Mythology teems with the con¬ 
ception. Philosophers have dreamed of it. The prom¬ 
ise and prophecy of Eden may never have been uttered 
in so many words, but in some manner it crept into 
the consciousness of man, and became a part of his 
earthly inheritance. Perhaps it was a part of that 
primary endowment, “ in the image of God created He 
him.” 

The idea of the Incarnation, then, is not a novel one. 
The student of comparative religions, whether believer, 
agnostic, or infidel, must take it into consideration. It 
is not proposed here to enlarge upon this phase of the 
question, but it is worth while to note it for the benefit 
of those who claim that the fundamental doctrine of 
Christianity traverses all rational expectation of human 
experience. Most men have in most ages of the world 
believed in and looked for an Incarnation, after their 
own kind. 

But we are before a mystery, with only one possible 
key to its solution—namely, that the Eternal Energy 
from which all things proceed is the Father-God, who 
made man in His own image, and therefore as an ele¬ 
ment of Fatherhood will reveal Himself as such, and 
provide a way for us to realize our Sonship. 

The Church teaches this fact according to the Scrip¬ 
tures : “ Great is the mystery of godliness, God was 


god’s ideal of sonship—the ihcarhatioh. 21 

manifest in the flesh.”* “And that He might recon¬ 
cile both unto God, in one body by the cross, having 
slain the enmity thereby.”! 44 God was in Christ, rec¬ 
onciling the world unto Himself.”]; 

But to quote the Scriptures is not a sufficient argu¬ 
ment for people who do not believe they contain, in 
any sense, the word of God. If, indeed, we are all per¬ 
suaded and convinced that God has as surely whispered 
His word to St. John and St. Paul concerning Jesus 
and immortality as He has to Darwin concerning the 
process of creation and the laws of physical life—to put 
inspiration on its lowest ground—then we may refer to 
their teachings as final, or at least as the last word 
uttered. But if some think that it pleases God to teach 
men only about their earth bodies and earth life, and 
nothing about their higher selves, then we cannot refer 
them to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament 
as authority. 

We believe, hut we cannot argue in a circle, who seek 
to convince men. Parrot exercises in New Testament 
phraseology are not even the alphabet of rational Chris¬ 
tianity. 

What are the rational grounds for inferring God’s 
manifestation in the flesh, aside from the words from 
Scripture and of Christ ? 

What is the possibility of the Incarnation (not now of 
the process, but the fact) ? 

Can God consistently with Himself as revealed in His 
other acknowledged works, and the law of evolution by 
which He apparently works, in any sense “ become man” ? 


* 1 Tim. 3 : 16. 


f Ephes. 2 : 16. 


\ 2 Cor. 5 : 19 T 


22 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


Science as well as the written revelation seems to teach 
that He cannot consistently do otherwise. We may not 
indulge the profound spiritual ignorance which rests 
satisfied in the all-embracing answer to both reasonable 
and unreasonable objections, that “ with God all things 
are possible.” With God many things are impossible, 
because He is God. 

It is impossible, among other things, we are slowly 
growing to learn, for Him to violate His law of creation. 
Everything brutal and human, visible and invisible, 
brings forth fruit after its kind. 

Let us go back now to the prime miracle (using popu¬ 
lar language), the miracle of creation, before which the 
seers of science and the priests of religion stand alike 
abashed and dumb. 

We are in the presence of God and the earth, but the 
earth is inert and swings in space without apparent 
meaning or purpose. 

Suddenly (or slowly, who knows ?) comes Life. The 
hum of the Spirit of God, His breath, is heard through¬ 
out the earth, groaning in the pangs of its new birth. 
Its great heart throbs, its arteries fill, its veins distend, 
and God imparts Himself by His Spirit, so as to become, 
in no pantheistic, but very real sense, an abiding pres¬ 
ence in the earth. 

Now, from the present human point of view this is a 
break in the continuity of the process of creation. 

It may be a real break, as it seems to us, because life 
cannot come from no life, or only an apparent break, 
and the resultant of a wider law than man’s intellect 
has yet been broadened to grasp. So far as science can 
teach us in exact terms, however, and by the confession 


god’s ideal of sonship—the incarnation. 23 

of science up to the present moment, it is a real break 
of continuity. The same marvel occurred later, when 
the psychical life was superadded to the physical, when, 
in the language of Genesis, “ man became a living soul.” 

Two breaks in continuity at least. But at once we 
see that the man is not perfect. God has imparted of 
Himself in a measure to His dumb and deaf creation, 
giving it voice and perception, that His purpose in it 
may be accomplished. God breathes, and each entity 
has life and power of reproduction “ after its kind”— 
the perfect rose, the perfect horse, the perfect dog (slowly 
or in a flash, it matters not). Shall God stop here and 
not produce a perfect manhood ? Man in the germ even 
was not perfect potentially as the beast is. Why ? 

There was that in him that made perfection impossi¬ 
ble after the manner of perfection in rose or dog. The 
moral quality, the free choice, with responsibility and 
accountability ; the breath of God, which imparted the 
higher divine life, whereas in the animal or earth it 
imparted only the lower divine life; this brought man 
to have a part in shaping his own perfection. 

How shall he ? 

The plant becomes what its germ holds in potency by 
laws with which the plant, broadly speaking, cannot 
interfere. So with the animal. 

But man can and does interfere. He can and does 
mar the Image in which he is fashioned. He breaks 
the laws which obeyed would protect him. He denies 
the relationship in which alone he can achieve his 
divine purpose. He does this because he is neither God 
nor Brute, but brute with divine life and power, which 
he may use brutally or divinely. It must be in the 


24 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


purpose of his God-Father that he shall use this endow¬ 
ment divinely, or else the God-Father is no father at all. 

Patience ! God is not through. Once again a break 
occurs, or let us more scientifically and spiritually be¬ 
lieve, the wider law is seen for a moment in operation 
and the man comes into whose stature all men are to 
grow. 

Man was not created and let go, an isolate monster, 
but was created the member of a great family, at the 
head of which was an Only Son, as type, representative, 
to whom all must some time and somehow and some¬ 
where conform, not by force, but by attraction ; by the 
power of His example, His influence. His oneness with 
both God His Father and Man His brother. 

Does this seem mystical ? Does it appear to the cool¬ 
brained man of science to be irrational that God should 
have waited until the days of Augustus Caesar before 
producing—even in a natural order—this Type, when 
it might have helped to solve the human problem ages 
before ? 

It is mysterious. But then we remember that Coper¬ 
nicus was a long time in coming after he was apparently 
needed. Galileo was late in the day. Boentgen with 
his X rays (the unknown quantity is significant in the 
processes of the mathematician, an exact scientist) shows 
us into the human flesh too late, in human thought, for 
millions of lives that might have been saved with this 
knowledge. 

We do not question the rationalism of God in His slow 
development of the domestic horse. We do not question 
the fact of certain apparent breaks in the continuity of 
the creation process. Even with the details of the In- 


GOD’S IDEAL OF SONSHIP—THE IHCARHATIOH. 25 


carnation to be examined more at length hereafter, sci¬ 
ence has no quarrel on a priori grounds.* What is the 
probability, then, that such a being as the God-Father 
would reveal Himself in terms of humanity, that God 
should be manifest in the flesh as He is manifest in a 
lower way in the earth and sky and sea ? 

Given a creator and a creature ; a creator, moreover, 
who has demonstrated in all other known parts of His 
creation that all things are in order, and developing 
slowly or swiftly a perfection of the ideal which is en¬ 
shrined in their germ, as the oak is in the acorn or the 
butterfly in the cocoon ; what may we rationally expect, 
but that He is found by the same necessity of His being 
to bring man to a conclusion as justifiable as that of the 
perfected tree or insect. 

The human interrogation is not wholly answered by 
food, clothing, and shelter. The questions of the mind 
and soul are just as imperative. We rightfully ask 
bread for the intellectual and spiritual life ; will God 
give bread to every animal desire, and stones to the 
higher craving which marks the likeness between Him 
and part of His creation ? 

It is not the natural man’s fault, but God’s purpose 
that he should need outside help to explain his position 
and give meaning to his existence on this earth. The 
analogy of nature teaches that God has brought into 
being no useless thing, that of His creation no atom is 
lost out of sight. Apart from written revelation, science 
proclaims that the Creator will not bring one of the 
least of His productions to “ intellectual confusion.” 


* Note 6, p. 226. 


26 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


Rational Christianity teaches concerning this necessity 
that in Jesus, the anointed, the Only Son, the God- 
Father has justified what science proclaims and the 
human soul demands. The uniqueness of His person¬ 
ality lies in the fact that He is the Only Son in fact. 
He only fulfils the Father’s will. He only i3 the un¬ 
marred image. He only expresses God in human terms. 
He only is really God in man. 

But the Only Son is forever linked with and a part of 
humanity. He can never lay off His human garb. 
Moreover, we are on our way to achieve Sonship. One 
day we shall see Him, and we shall be like Him. This 
is evolution. We shall develop the image of God im¬ 
pressed upon the human germ. Only so will the God- 
Father be justified in the creation of earth children. 
Our own individual part in this evolution will appear as 
we proceed. 

The fact, then, may be assumed that if God intends 
us to act as sons, He will teach us by the son-type. 
Sonship is not an abstraction, however, and is therefore 
manifested in the flesh. God in the Christ reconciling 
(i.e., by teaching, by interpretation, by demonstrating 
the common oneness) man to Himself, is a moral proba¬ 
bility so strong as to become at least rational to the in¬ 
tellect of moral beings. 

Rational Christianity without going beyond human 
depth in dealing with what it terms in traditional lan¬ 
guage the “substance” of God, believes that the gulf 
between the Eternal Energy and its human manifesta¬ 
tions is bridged in the divine being historically known 
as Jesus of Nazareth. 

Traditional Christianity has confused the whole ques- 


god’s IDEAL OF SONSHIP—THE IHCARHATIOH. 27 

tion of probabilities here by the extraordinary teaching 
that the Son of man, the type and representative, was 
an afterthought of God instead of the culmination of 
the creation. The traditional view of Bethlehem and 
Calvary sets forth God as failing in His first plan, and 
patching up the failure by a mechanical contrivance 
which takes both its imagery and its idea from the bloody 
sacrifices of Judaism. 

This is the conception of a very feeble Deity, indeed. 
No infinite Eternal Energy, still less no Father-God is 
embraced in that idea of the Creator. 

The Only Son was no afterthought. In the slow evo¬ 
lution of man there is a purpose from all time. He is 
that purpose. 

It is true that He died. He did net, however, come 
into the world for the primary purpose of being cruci¬ 
fied, but to complete God’s manifestation of manhood. 
Coming into the world He was crucified, not because 
God intended it or needed it, but because man would 
have it. The Son died because He was the Only Son, 
and could carry out the Father’s will only in one way. 
Men flocked about Him, and He was tempted to teach 
men about God in an easier than God’s way. He put 
that behind Him and became a sacrifice upon the cross 
—a sacrifice to the world’s idea of righteousness, to the 
crude, spiritual ideas of man. But the Son must have 
come even had there been no sin in the world, and would 
have accomplished the God-Father’s purpose had there 
been no cross to bear. 

So far concerning the Divine Being. 

The a priori probability of God’s presence in the life 
of humanity is our contention. All the facts seem to 


28 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


point to its necessity if man is to be anything beyond a 
toy-demon diverting himself upon a cinder heap. 

The chief strength of the Christian position regarding 
Jesus, the Son of God, however, lies not in scientific 
demonstration, although that is one part of the rational 
Christian’s heritage. There is an argument for what 
we call (with varying inflection, but one ultimate mean¬ 
ing, by no means to be clearly expressed in human lan¬ 
guage) the divinity of Christ, which transcends all that 
can be exploited by philosophy or inferred from the 
analogies of science. 

The character of the historical person, Jesus of Naza¬ 
reth, in His work, apart even from the miracles ; in His 
words ; in the deathless influence for righteousness and 
perfect manhood and womanhood for nineteen centuries, 
is found in the words, “ of Jesus Christ , Our Lord” 

Why our Master ? We ourselves are as the gods, know¬ 
ing good and evil. Yet we with all the majesty of our 
physical and intellectual possessions know that we have 
not reached the ultimate. We would find God and 
know Him. Every way mark of achievement in what¬ 
soever field which honest men have here sot up has been 
stamped in letters of blood, “ Toward God !” 

Jesus of Nazareth came to the earth and expressed 
Himself in the terms we would expect of God, so far as 
He could and leave men still free. Jesus is Master be¬ 
cause He is as God to us. He has been to us the knowl¬ 
edge we seek. The old pagan was not all wrong in find¬ 
ing God in the sun and the stars, in the rivers that 
brought life, and the groves that whispered of a spirit 
that came as it listed. God must come to His creation 
through His creatures. God can only be known per- 


god’s ideal of sonship—-the ihcarhation. 29 

fectly by a Mediator, but to men that Mediator must be 
man. 

This man is Jesus of Nazareth, our Master and Lord, 
because of the mastery He has over the secrets of Son- 
ship, of right manhood, and because of the revelation 
He has made of God. I do not mean here to claim one 
whit more than is conceded by many an honest agnostic, 
sceptic, non-Christian. Their testimony is our testi¬ 
mony. That they draw different conclusions does not 
vitiate the facts. 

Men whose spiritual sense is atrophied, as Darwin 
confesses was “ that part of the brain upon which the 
higher tastes depended,”* come to the Christian prophet 
saying, “ I do not understand your Christ as the Son of 
God on scientific or philosophical grounds,” and they 
should be met fairly and frankly on those grounds. 
Rational Christianity has its scientific, philosophical, 
and historical position as well as its moral and spiritual 
basis. The time was when to doubt was equivalent to 
damnation in the minds of religious folk, when the re¬ 
jection of proof texts was the unpardonable sin, and 
when Augustine and Calvin ranked St. Paul in theo¬ 
logical estimation. 

But that time is past. Rational Christianity demands 
rational grounds for belief, and offers them. Rational 
Christianity believes to the uttermost that God is in 
His world, that His life as truly drums in the shell upon 
the seashore and thrills in every bird-note as that it 
dwells about the altar, “ where two or three are gathered 
together,” or softens the heart in the prayer for peace. 


* Note 7, p. 226. 


30 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


Rational Christianity recognizes the working of the 
infinite Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed, 
and realizes itself to be one manifestation of that energy, 
but not the only one, while seeking to influence all. 
Christianity, therefore, must first be rational to appeal 
to rational creatures. The most reasonable proposition 
of her charter of faith from her own point of view is 
that which presents Jesus Christ as Lord. 

Therefore to the doubtful or curious or puzzled seeker 
after truth we say, While we will meet you in your quest 
on other than spiritual grounds, we will say, too, that 
all the scientific and philosophical argument of the 
schools does not weigh for a moment in the balance with 
the moral demonstration of the Lordship of Jesus. The 
marvellous change He brought about—so marked that 
the world’s birthday dates from His, which before was 
marked by the length of a reign or the age of a city— 
the inspiration of nobler living ; the glorified self-abne¬ 
gation of service and sacrifice, which have been the 
world’s sacrament of progress ; the joy of knowing the 
Infinite Eternal Energy beyond as the good Father-God 
by our side, caring for each one as a child is cared for by 
its earth father, this and what flows from it all from 
generation to generation—light in the darkness of sor¬ 
row, hope in the blackness of doubt, peace in the be' 
wilderment of pain—this is His claim to be the world’s 
Master. I care not what else He is or is not. He has 
been God to me, this Jesus of Nazareth. Until some 
one comes, if that be possible, who utters a later word 
of God, this one is the Only Son, our Brother. 

And His simple testimony concerning Himself was 
given in language not difficult to understand, if so be 


GOD’S IDEAL OF SONSHIP—THE INCARNATION. 31 

we do not weave scholastic traditions through the warp 
of its simplicity. 

When the worn, tired, disappointed, and jealous dis¬ 
ciples of John the Baptist came to Him with that sig¬ 
nificant question from the prophet of the desert, “ Art 
thou He that should come, or look we for another?” 
His answer to the query that touched His divine origin, 
as well as His divine mission, was no appeal to human 
genealogy or divine “ substance,” but just his work. 
“ Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen 
and heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the 
lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, 
to the poor the Gospel is preached.”* 

If God is to come at all, a belief which after a fashion 
has lain in the hope of almost all men, we should expect 
Him in the garb of one who went about doing good like 
this One. 

Note, —A friendly critic points out that my statement of the de¬ 
velopment of the Son of Man in this chapter may be taken by the 
superficial reader as maiming the Person of the Eternal Son, and 
so the co-equality of the Father and the Son, It is certainly far 
from my purpose to belittle the eternal generation of the Son. I 
have not entered upon a discussion of the “ substance” of God, 
or the “ persons” of the Trinity, however, because the intention 
of these pages falls far short of attempting a technical theologi¬ 
cal treatise. If I can establish a way for men to rationally per¬ 
ceive the perfect Son of Man, it is the first step toward compre¬ 
hending the Son of God. That He emptied Himself of His glory, 
and also, increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God 
and man, are the important notes of His earth life, which first 
present themselves to our observation. 

It is through the perfect Son of Man that we reach any con¬ 
ception of the Eternal Son of God. 


* Luke 7 : 22. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE SOH OF MARY—THE YIRGIH BIRTH. 

“ Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin 
Mary.” Apostles' Creed. 

“ The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace 
and truth.” St. John 1 : 14. 

“ It would be a great error, therefore, to suppose that the 
Agnostic rejects Theology because of its puzzles and wonders.” 

Professor Huxley. 

The second section of the second article of the Apos¬ 
tles’ Creed is frequently alleged to he the historical crux 
of the Christian position. That Jesus Our Lord was 
conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin 
Mary, is the faith of rational as well as traditional Chris¬ 
tianity. 

That God should manifest Himself in terms of human¬ 
ity is at least possible and probable. Granting this, we 
have to deal with what is, after all, a secondary ques¬ 
tion, the process of this manifestation. Now the process 
which is recorded in the Gospels, and from them trans¬ 
ferred to the Creed, is a serious stumbling-block to many 
on account of its variation from the observed working 
of the laws of nature. It must be admitted that it is 
also a stumbling-block to many devout and believing 
minds who dare not but allow in their secret hearts 


THE SOH OF MARY—THE VIRGIH BIRTH. 


33 


that it is an awful puzzle to the reason. To many it is 
a bugaboo of the intellect, and to many it is a necessary 
fetich of religious faith. Rational Christianity cannot 
admit either extreme. If the Incarnation be a vital 
truth in the revelation of the God-Father to His chil¬ 
dren, there must be a way in which the intellect may 
approach it without chains, and its moral use, beauty, 
and truth be at least apprehended, without smothering 
the reason, and without mere superstitious credulity. 

I say apprehended, not comprehended. It is not 
within my purpose or power to attempt to prove with 
mathematical exactness the Incarnation, as I shall here¬ 
after attempt to prove the historical accuracy of the 
Resurrection of Jesus. The fact is not one that admits 
of that sort of proof. Much of the agnosticism of the 
present and past is due to the over-insistence of tradi¬ 
tional Christianity that the Virgin birth comes within 
the same category of facts as the Resurrection. It is 
true that it is related by two of the New Testament 
writers. But the modern prophet of Christ has to deal 
with a large multitude to whom the New Testament has 
no more force as evidence than the Koran. 

Lest there should be some misapprehension as to the 
purpose of this chapter, then, and consequent disappoint¬ 
ment in its conclusions, I must say that my effort is 
directed only toward giving a rational standpoint from 
which the agnostic as well as the believer may approach 
the doctrine of the Incarnation. Rational Christianity 
is not afraid but that the truth will ultimately prevail, 
nor is it afraid of the truth that may prevail. The 
agnostic may deal with the fact of the Virgin Birth as 
seems wise and good to him ; he may believe or reject 


34 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


it as true or false, but I hope to show him that there is 
nothing irrational in the fact as a manifestation of the 
Infinite Eternal Energy. 

We have already noted that ancient theologies and 
mythologies are full of the idea of the Incarnation. 
Why God should become man at all to complete or carry 
on His purpose in creation, is not a fair objection to 
raise to the Christian belief, although it is one that lies 
more or less vaguely in men’s minds. Christianity 
must deal with humanity as it finds it, and somehow 
man, in all phases of religious aspiration, from the 
fetich worship of the stone fallen from heaven, to the 
beautiful, but equally barren idolatries of Greek civiliza¬ 
tion, has that as a part of his endowment which is not 
answered or satisfied until, after some fashion, he may 
lay his hand on God. Man has always been dreaming 
of, and in a blind, pathetic way, believing in, a doctrine 
of Incarnation, “ God in man reconciling the world to 
Himself.” 

The large grain of truth in the agnostic position is 
that God cannot be known in the abstract, and no cate¬ 
chism definition can give Him form. 

Rational Christianity proclaims that Jesus Christ, the 
Only Son, is the manifestation of God in the flesh. 
Why may we not all be called Sons of God equally with 
Him ? Because we are not. In the image of God we 
are truly, and therefore sons, but God is not perfectly 
seen in any of us. He is refracted ; therefore we are 
not as the Only Son, in whom we perceive all that the 
best in us demands of his God. 

Grant for a moment that the record written of Jesus 
in the Gospels be true. Is there anything further a 


THE SON OF MARY—THE VIRGIN BIRTH. 


35 


man could expect of God coming to man under the 
necessary limitations of a man ? Either way we look 
at it the problem is a marvel. Either God manifested 
Himself in Jesus, or certain men constructed a figure 
such as God might have used in His manifestations. 

Rational Christianity declares its belief that this his¬ 
torical person was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of 
the Virgin Mary. If this be a fact, it is evidently clear 
that God has fulfilled Himself and justified Himself in 
the bringing of man upon this earth, for He has not only 
completed His own ideal for manhood in a person, but 
He has revealed Himself in that Person so clearly that 
man’s insatiate thirst for knowledge of Him is satisfied. 
In Jesus a man may know the Father-God, as Jesus 
Himself said : “ I am in the Father, and the Father 
in Me;”* “He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
Father." f 

What is involved in the Virgin Birth of Jesus of Naza¬ 
reth ? The birth of a manchild under conditions at 
seeming variance with the observed laws of procreation. 
Of an earthly mother, and with the accompaniment of 
woman’s burden of pain and anguish, Jesus is born. 
Conceived not by man, but by the Holy Ghost. Is this 
possible under laws which we are taught are always the 
same ? 

What are laws ? They are not instruments like scales 
or measures. They are not absolute, unchangeable, 
Procrustean processes. They are human observations 
upon the working of God in His world. The energy is 
back of the accomplished fact. The fact is accom- 


* John 14 : 11. 


f John 14 : 9. 


36 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


plislied because the energy wills it, and in the way the 
energy wills it. God, the source of life as we have 
found, is the Will back of what we call laws. He is the 
primary cause. 

He is the primary cause of procreation, the life-giver 
of every plant, animal, and human existence. We ob¬ 
serve that in the procreation of man He acts indirectly. 
This, therefore, we call the law of procreation. But 
back of our observation is the God-cause, the origin and 
source of life. 

Hoes He always produce life indirectly through the 
sexes ? Science declares that He does not. There is no 
higher agnostic authority in science than Mr. Huxley, 
who expressly declares that virgin procreation is an or¬ 
dinary phenomenon to the naturalist.* Weissmann,f 
materialist of the straitest sect, enlarges upon the same 
fact. 

Parthenogenesis in nature, then, is not an assumption 
of Christianity, although these instances and quotations 
are by no means advanced as proofs of the Virgin Birth 
of Christ. They cannot be fairly so used, but they are 
most important as justifying rational Christianity in 
the contentions of these pages—namely, that there is no 
a priori rational or scientific objection to the partheno- 
genetic process of the Incarnation. The scientific ration¬ 
alist may study the chief doctrine of Christianity, there¬ 
fore, without submitting himself to the charge of super¬ 
stition. 

We put little stress, however, upon the conceded fact of 
parthenogenesis in lower forms of life, because there is 

* For the whole passage, see note 6, p. 226. f Note 8, p. 227. 


THE SOM OF MARY—THE VIRGIM BIRTH. 37 

a larger realm in which to pursue our search after the 
rational element in the Incarnation. 

Direct action of God upon His creation is quite as 
conceivable as indirect. In the human generation we 
observe the natural process of the transmission of life, 
but the life-giver is not confined, even under His 
own orderly will, to what we know as natural pro¬ 
cesses. 

God has always varied and controlled the working of 
His will, as we see in the variation of plants and animal 
life. He has imparted so much of His life to man as to 
make him a supernatural “ power,” as Horace Bushnell 
observes, in contrast with the natural “ things” of earth. 
We can divert and traverse a law which is of equal im¬ 
portance with the law of procreation—viz., the law of 
gravitation. We must so vary and harness this great 
law in order to live. God’s life seems thus to be 
‘ i locally adapted’ ’ to our needs, even our whims. 

God may surely act, then, in nature without breaking 
law, but either varying its application, or, as I prefer to 
believe, bringing under human observation for a time 
the working of law which man has not yet grown adult 
enough to comprehend. He may do this from a rational 
point of view, even in a way that seems to dash all pre¬ 
vious experience and upset all previous scientific the¬ 
ories. At least science teaches us so, for such a “ law” 
has recently come for the first time under observation. 
Ho longer ago than last year the impossibility of seeing 
through a grindstone was a proverb much used. To-day 
it is an anachronism. We do see through a grindstone 
without a hole in it. Professor Roentgen is the instru¬ 
ment thereof. The Christian man who believes in the 


38 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


Lordship of Jesus of Nazareth need not be surprised. 
Did He not say that when the Holy Spirit—the Life- 
Giver—should come. He would guide men into all truth ? 
After the Roentgen rays will any one dare set a limit to 
the play of God’s life in this world through men who 
are in His image ? 

If God should act directly upon a part of His creation 
for a reason—to reveal Himself to man, who else shall 
not find Him out—is it irrational to believe that in this 
action there is an advance of man in the knowledge of 
God, a further revelation of the God-Hather ? 

It has not even the primary objection of novelty, for 
we revert at once to the miracle of creation, and see 
that God so imparted Life to the earth, to the animal, 
to man in the beginning. 

We read in the Scriptures of science and of revelation, 
that the Spirit of God brooded over matter and con¬ 
ceived life. We read in another Scripture that the same 
Spirit brooded over the Virgin and conceived life. 
What is the rational objection ? The same Spirit, the 
Life-Giver, fertilized earth and the womb. The God 
life takes to itself, because now working under limita¬ 
tions of flesh, the form of man, and the holy thing is 
called Jesus. He is a man in every essential of every 
man who comes into the world. But He is God, too, 
much more than every man, for the human entail is 
broken, and a new strain of life is poured thenceforward 
into the veins of humanity. This new life is not new 
physical life to be physically transmitted, but a spiritual 
life to be spiritually transmitted. The manner of this 
transmission will be discussed hereafter. It is a fresh 
graft upon an old stock. 


THE SON OF MARY—THE VIRGIN BIRTH. 


39 


We return to the conception by the Holy Ghost of 
the Virgin Mary. 

If it is a real break of continuity, and not, as I think, 
in harmony with the theory of evolution, the reg¬ 
ular working of a law beyond our human ken, still it is 
not unscientific, for there have been two apparent breaks 
of continuity already—viz., the genesis of physical life 
and the addition of psychical life. 

Even in the scriptural narrative we note that the first 
human life was what the scientists call unicellular. 
There was primarily one parent, which is in harmony 
with the single germ theory of evolution. God’s early 
process accordingly to both science and the Scriptures 
was by the action of divine life upon one germ, or one 
creature, according to the point of view. Is it irrational 
to suppose that in completing what was confessedly only 
begun in Adam (whether Adam were a germ or a per¬ 
son), He should use the same law for a purpose ? 

What was this purpose ? 

Up to the time of Christ the mental and physical man 
had been developing almost perfectly. In mind and 
body man was at almost the apex of spiral progress 
upward. The literature of that age and the age imme¬ 
diately preceding is extant in proof of this. 

But if this were all, was it enough ? 

If a man to-day is so perfectly developed physically as 
to be an absolutely flawless specimen of material man¬ 
hood, and yet does not know how to read, write, or 
reason, he is only a perfect animal, after all. He may 
win a race, and lift a ton, and yet be only a highly or¬ 
ganized animal. Add the intellect of a Spencer and the 
genius of a Shakespeare, and, although nearer the goal, 


40 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


he has not yet achieved it. The spiritual faculty may 
be atrophied, but it is there. With the spiritual life at 
stagnation point, man in his long race from Eden is 
still a beaten man. 

All the physical and mental preparation does not end 
in itself. The good gift of strength and health may be 
used with a recklessness that turns it into weakness. 
The good gift of intellectual culture may be a devilish 
instrument to corrupt and crush humanity. We have 
illustrations of both. 

The whole man includes spiritual potency and devel¬ 
opment to conserve, correct, and give moral meaning to 
his other parts. A good man like Gordon, dying in the 
Soudan, is a more perfect expression of the image of 
God than a great man like Napoleon, parcelling out the 
map of Europe among his family and favorites. 

As with the endowments, so with the race. The In¬ 
carnation was the fertilization of physical and mental 
perfection with spiritual perfection. 

Again, I note that apart from the theological theory 
of the necessity of a new birth for humanity, is the fact 
of such a new birth, expressed in whatever terms the 
world pleases, in the spiritual Life, Light, and Knowl¬ 
edge, that dates from the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. 

The achievement of this historical person in the prog* 
ress of civilization is the rational, moral argument that 
He is somehow God in the world and man, reuniting 
and redeeming both to Himself. This is an answer to 
the question Why ? 

Physical prowess, military achievement, animal dis¬ 
regard of personal danger, all the development of the 
natural grandeur of Adam had reached their highest 


THE SON OF MARY—THE VIRGIN BIRTH. 


41 


type in the sons of Adam, when Mary rode into Bethle¬ 
hem on a winter's night. Caesar on his world's throne 
heard no cry as the Babe wailed under the solemn 
stars. Yet from that Babe's first utterance a different 
type of perfection developed in humanity ; not crushing 
out the old types, but interpreting, illuminating, ex¬ 
panding them. 

We argue from the analogies of scientific discovery 
and invention, that when Jesus was born, man had 
reached the point where his physical perfection could be 
better used in the manifestation of God’s creative pur¬ 
pose, by receiving another wave of outflow from the 
Infinite Eternal Energy. It was the “ fulness of 
times." 

That outflow was incarnate in the Infant Jesus as a 
new life born of woman. Those things that make men 
the best now are not necessarily the strong masculine 
attributes, but the tender feminine ones. The man 
who is a force for eternal and temporal good in the 
world to-day is not the strong man physically or intel¬ 
lectually, but the pure man spiritually. 

Physical life is still transmitted through the line of 
Adam, but “ in Adam all die there is no eternal life 
in the material. Spiritual life is transmitted through 
the line of Christ, a life which is deathless in essence 
and in time ; “ in Christ shall all be made alive."* 

The Head of humanity has taken Ilis place in the 
family, of which He is as yet the Only Son in all the 
depth and breadth of that awful adjective. He abides 
with humanity, gradually drawing into permanent rela- 


* 1 Cor. 15 : 23. 


42 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


tionship with Himself and His Father all other sons 
who but slowly learn the duties, the privileges, the re¬ 
sponsibilities of sonship. Some day they will know ; 
some day they will be like Him, for they shall see Him 
as He is. 

Sonship is no new thing. Our heritage did not first 
come with the Incarnation, but with the creation. Im¬ 
mortality has always been a potency. Were we not 
made in the image of God ? Which things are the 
primal truths of natural religion. He brought these 
things to light. 

Does this whole question of a belief in God’s real 
manifestation of Himself in the world, new creating 
man, so to speak, turn upon the fact of the Virgin Birth 
of the historical person, Jesus of Nazareth ? Many 
men ask this question seriously and honestly who accept 
every moral proposition of Christianity, and are practi¬ 
cally Christian men in fact and in truth, save that they 
deny or are intellectually unable to apprehend the Virgin 
Birth. 

Traditional theology answers with passionate earnest¬ 
ness in the affirmative that a belief in the Incarnation 
as manifested in the Virgin Birth, and as it is dogmati¬ 
cally stated in the Creeds, is not only necessary to the 
spiritual make-up of a Christian man, but to his salva¬ 
tion from endless punishment. The Athanasian Creed 
(which is not found in the offices of the American Book 
of Common Prayer) adds that whosoever shall not hold 
this and other traditional statements concerning the 
deep things of God and man “ shall without doubt 
perish everlastingly. ” 

Which is a comparatively simple and easy way of set- 


THE SON OF MARY—THE VIRGIN BIRTH. 


43 


tling the whole question, but not satisfactory to many, 
both of those who believe in the Divinity of Christ (as 
the present writer) and those who do not. 

Traditional theology views with suspicion, however, 
any alternatives to its own formulated statements of 
the faith. 

But alternatives there must be, unless traditional the¬ 
ology is content to consign a large proportion of the 
sons of God to annihilation or endless torment. 

My Unitarian neighbor is as good a man, so far as any 
one can judge by a character expressed in upright life, 
as my Presbyterian neighbor. He is as spiritual a man 
and as religious a man, except for the theological posi¬ 
tion he assigns to Jesus of Nazareth. Will he “ with¬ 
out doubt perish everlastingly” unless he conforms intel¬ 
lectually to the Westminster Catechism ? 

Even my Presbyterian neighbor does not really believe 
this. Traditional theology, which has journeyed far from 
the theology of Christ (which was so little that He em¬ 
braced it all in the brief Baptismal formula), does not 
really believe it, although it is its only logical ultimate. 

I believe that if we could penetrate the secrets of the 
Infinite Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed, 
we would all see a scientific and spiritual necessity for 
the Incarnation of God to complete the spiritual creation, 
as we are all beginning and only beginning to see the 
necessity for the continuous breath of God’s life in the 
earth to complete the physical creation. But agnosti¬ 
cism can teach mankind faith—faith not in the details, 
but in the Fact. If the God-Father is, and if we can 
realize that to be what we are imperiously called upon 
to be by our endowments as supernatural powers, we 


44 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


must know Him, then as honest men we must seek that 
knowledge at whatever cost. 

If He be the God-Father, He wants His children to 
know Him, for in that knowledge only will His creation 
of beings in His image be of avail to Him. 

He must—the must is both a scientific and moral 
term—reveal Himself to us. Science teaches us that He 
is neither an eternal monk nor a maker of mechanical 
toys. Fatherhood implies love. The love will go out 
to the children as a necessity of Fatherhood, and so 
manifest itself as that in the fulness of times, not sooner, 
man will look up from the earth he subdues in the sweat 
of his brow, and see the Father and know Him. 

How ? 

Christianity has given the only answer that has so far 
satisfied the conditions of the problem that fall under 
our observation. Perhaps there is a further expansion 
of the answer in which some day we will see the Incar¬ 
nation from other points of view, with clearer vision and 
more spiritual perception than are expressed in the lan¬ 
guage of the Creed. 

Meanwhile, we are called upon to believe that God en¬ 
tered man as He had long before entered other parts of 
His creation, by the same Spirit in which He brooded 
over the first wild chaos of swirling, heaving matter. 
Jesus of Nazareth marks this entrance. The history of 
the world and man is a record of His working. 

But everything teaches us that His working is not 
alone for those who recognize Him, but also for those 
who do not. 

Does a Father scorn, is He alienated from the little 
babe who does not realize his heritage of sonship ? Does 


THE SON OF MARY—THE VIRGIN BIRTH. 


45 


He turn out forever from the home the youth who, 
while learning his own individuality, oftentimes forgets 
that responsibilities go with privileges ? 

The bottom truth of Christianity is not a series of 
opinions, however divinely true and humanly orthodox, 
arrayed for intellectual acceptance, but this, God is our 
Father. The Only Son of that Father came not into 
this world to be the Head of a handful of Marys and 
Johns. He stretched out His hand also to Thomas. 
He is the head of the family. Whatever deep meaning 
there is in the Incarnation, it has as much application 
to the one who believes little as to the one who believes 
much. 

The one who believes much has so much the advan¬ 
tage. The one who believes little has so much the more 
to learn, and to suffer in the process. 

Why God should manifest Himself as “ conceived of 
the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,” we may see 
in part, but as for the whole divine reason, “ It doth 
not yet appear.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE SON OF MAN—THE ATONEMENT. 

“ Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and 
buried.” Apostles' Greed. 

“ And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto me.” St. John 12 : 82. 

“ Love is God’s motive ; love forgets no single individual; love 
goes all lengths of sacrifices ; love in the universe works on 
through all failures to its victorious issue.” 

Charles Gore. 

With these words we enter the unquestioned histori¬ 
cal environment of Christianity. The name of the 
Roman Governor fixes the period in time when the 
human person, Jesus of Nazareth, suffered certain 
things, was crucified, died under the punishment, and 
was buried. 

The Christian interpretation of these events is called 
the doctrine of the Atonement. Through the working 
of this strange tragedy God and man are made at one. 

Rational Christianity holds fast to the essential truth 
of this doctrine, but differs from the traditional theory 
of its application. 

What are the facts with which we have to deal ? God 
coming in the form of a man, to men, to complete man, 
finds His creation deranged by the act of man. Prog¬ 
ress is set back. The story of the Fall in Genesis is 


THE SOH OF MAH—THE ATOHEMENT. 


47 


that the man, snatching at the fruits of achievement 
before he has toiled for achievement, finds he is ham¬ 
pered by a new condition of affairs, which he in his 
hasty greed has created for himself. Man can create his 
environment because he is a supernatural power— i.e., a 
freely acting, self-choosing power, moving upon, con¬ 
trolling, and therefore above, nature. 

Man, because of his divine inheritance of supernatu¬ 
ralism, has traversed God’s law for his being, with re¬ 
sults. 

At this point we must break from traditional theories. 
The popular view (not, I believe, the view of sound 
Anglican theologians) is that the fall was a failure of 
God ; that immediately He sought a remedy and sent 
His Only Son into the world to patch up, by a mechani¬ 
cal device patterned after the bloody sacrifices of Judaism, 
this mistake of the Creator. 

This is a queer idea of God, and in its theological 
working out it involves what seems to me to be an im¬ 
moral, or at least an unmoral process. 

We will return to this question presently. The theory 
of these pages is that God’s coming in the fulness of 
times to perfect His spiritual creation, as He had for¬ 
merly come to perfect His physical creation, was not an 
afterthought, but a Forethought. He came in Christ 
as the crown and interpretation of the whole creation, 
as man had come to be the crown and interpretation of 
a part. 

It is the idea which gives meaning to and is explained 
by the phrase, ‘ 4 The Lamb slain from the foundation 
of the world.”* 


* Rev. 13:8. 


48 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


The work of the Only Son is immensely increased and 
enlarged and embarrassed by the way in which the other 
sons had been using their possessions. To complete 
man is a harder task, now that man has put stumbling- 
blocks in the way, and broken the laws, in obedience to 
which lay the path to sonship. Man has destroyed his 
natural harmony with God by interposing laws of his 
own which traverse God’s law. There is discord. The 
Only Son before He can complete the creation, begun 
before the world was, must bring man back into har¬ 
mony with God. He must show men the Father, so 
that they will desire Him. 

Whatever is involved in this manifestation is a part 
of the Only Son’s work. Pain, humiliation, misunder¬ 
standing, sacrifices beyond the appreciation of any but 
a Father and an Only Son, all these must be undergone, 
if necessary, to bring back the other sons to the Father’s 
House. 

This is the atonement. With an element of propitia¬ 
tion, as we will see, and also of vicariousness, but not 
the propitiation of a meek sufferer to an angry God, 
and not vicarious in the mechanical sense that the word 
is popularly used, expressed by the word substitution. 

What were the relations of God and man when man 
for the first time defied his Maker and went into the far 
country of his own desire ? 

Of course no one knows really. We only think we 
know. We infer from what we think about God and 
know of men. We are too prone, perhaps, to make 
assertions concerning the Infinite and Eternal One. 

But this much must be conceded to our weakness. 
In the idea of God maintained in these pages God was 


THE SOM OF MAH—THE ATOMEMEMT. 


49 


not angry with man, and needed no appeasing of a wrath 
that did not exist. God-Father must be hurt and 
grieved (anthropomorphism, of course, but it is our 
only resource, and why not in a literal sense if God is in 
man and is man). To believe that God became incar¬ 
nate out of wrath with man, a wrath which was unap¬ 
peased until His Only Son was nailed upon the world’s 
cross, is to degrade both God and man. 

The idea of the Only Son perpetually pleading with 
an angry Father is a very mean and barren faith, indeed, 
to lay before earthly fathers and sons. 

How men who are dogmatically stringent for a meta¬ 
physical Trinity can contemplate with logical minds 
this spectacle of a divided Godhead passes comprehen¬ 
sion. 

It cannot be that Christ at the right hand of God is 
pleading with One who needs to be placated, and neither 
the Apostles’ nor the Nicene Creed can be quoted in 
support of such a theory. It flows from, a materialistic 
view of the Sacrificial Life of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ 
of God. 

But whatever is the mind of God, the atonement is 
first of all, in time and space, man’s need, and is only 
God’s demand in the sense that without it His purpose 
in man’s creation is incomplete. 

Man’s disobedience involves at some time an appre¬ 
hension of loss on his part. Then he finds that his sin 
has created a new world for him. In the old world of 
innocence he walks erect naked and unashamed. He 
greets God cheerily without fear. In the new world he 
creeps into the shadows of the garden as he hears God’s 
call, and with an improvised modus vivendi of fig-leaves 


50 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


as clothing, he is ashamed. There is something between 
him and his Maker that prevents direct intercourse. 
He knows that this is not God’s fault, but his own. 

But this is not all. 

Evil is easier to him. He is biassed unconsciously at 
times toward disobedience. This brings more confusion, 
and life becomes a struggle. In the sweat of his brow 
he goes forth to subdue the tangled thickets and domi¬ 
nate the brute creation. Sin, because it is not an orig¬ 
inal part of creation, but the free act of a supernatural 
being having power over creation, has complicated the 
relations of God, earth, and man. 

Man sees that this complication does not end in him¬ 
self. It is transmitted to his children. What the theo¬ 
logian calls original sin is sometimes scouted by the sci¬ 
entist, who ought to be the last to mock. Original sin 
is a tenet of physiology as well as of theology. It is 
heredity. 

But meanwhile the God-Father’s purpose is not de¬ 
stroyed, although its consummation is delayed. 

When He imparted the divine power to man to move 
freely upon material creation He must have taken break¬ 
age into account. In His dealings with the Only Son 
of course this necessity does not enter, but with the 
other sons, who had not achieved stature, something 
must be allowed for the errant diversions of nonage. 

The God-Father is still coming, working hitherto and 
now, to lift man up and bind him back to his place in 
the universe, which further on in our study we shall see 
to be at the right hand of God. 

Man struggles on. He is not aware of his ultimate 
purpose or destiny. He is not aware of what he is 


THE SON OF MAN—THE ATONEMENT. 


51 


really doing in the struggle that brings sweat to his 
brow, and as often sorrow as joy to his heart. 

He is not aware wholly of his loss. He does not 
know that he refracts instead of reflecting God’s image. 
He is like a child walking out into gradually deepening 
water, ignorant of pitfalls and quicksands and the deeps 
which may slowly engulf him. Still less does he know 
of the Everlasting arms underneath. 

How shall man be taught ? 

He knows God’s law, but not God’s love ; that he is 
a creature, not that he is a son. He thinks ignorantly 
that God is such an one as himself. “ Thou shalt,” 
“ thou shalt not,” these he knows, and presently learns 
that they bear with their disobedience penalty. Man 
was weak, and he knew it; strong, and he knew it not. 
That knowledge lay in his communion with God, from 
which he turned away, ashamed and afraid. He thought 
God was angry, because the breakage of God’s law 
brought with it a sting. 

How shall he neutralize this sting ? 

The literature of the ancient world, whether on parch¬ 
ment, papyrus, or monument, shows that man judged 
God by himself, which, indeed, was his only way, and 
the way that would have led to perfection had he taken 
it in time. So man seeks to propitiate an angry deity 
by presents of corn, wine, and blood—the fruit of his 
body for the sin of his soul. This will do for spiritual 
infancy and for a time. The God-Father accommodates 
Himself to this weak creature. But it is man’s idea, 
not God’s, this idea of propitiation to avert punishment 
or to induce kindness. 

Through these crudities God leads men into a con- 


52 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


sciousness that the only way, the living way, to Him, is 
at cost and by sacrifice—at the cost of rooting up 
things that man has sown between himself and his 
Maker, and by the sacrifice of his own will in subjec¬ 
tion to the higher will of God, which takes into account 
not a part, but the whole of a man’s relation to his 
source, his environment, and his destiny. 

This idea, rudely expressed in Jewish sacrifices and 
pagan rites, has dominated the religious consciousness 
of man to the present day. We see it in the lower 
form of penance and in the higher forms of reparation 
and restitution. No real penitent to-day is satisfied as 
toward God until he finds relief in sacrifice of some 
kind. 

But to know God’s law by penalty is only rudimen¬ 
tary, after all; it merely reveals man’s weakness. He 
must know God’s law to be love, and in the apprehen¬ 
sion of this are uncovered the roots of his strength. 

Now to know that God as love is still Sacrifice, was 
the teaching of Jesus Christ. But it is a sacrifice differ¬ 
ent, indeed, from that of corn, wine, oil, and blood. It 
is the sacrifice of man’s human will—now a refracted 
and imperfect ray of the divine will—to the Father’s 
will for him. 

The Infinite Eternal Energy may not be permanently 
dissipated in errant, purposeless variations, but through 
their final conformation to law manifests itself as One. 

In the fulness of times—and may we not believe in 
harmony with the One purpose and according to the 
One law of procession and development ?—appears One 
in the human series who is the expression of this One¬ 
ness of God with His creation. He came teaching, not 


THE S02^ OF MAN—THE ATOHEMEHT. 


53 


only by word of mouth, but by being what He was, 
what God meant as the ultimate of that sentence “ Let 
us make man in our image. ’ ’ 

He taught and demonstrated, at cost, owing to the 
fleshly limitation of His own body, of blood and earthly 
peace, that to yield the human will to the divine is the 
real and ooly sacrifice that will suffice to redeem man 
from his alien condition of sin against God, against 
earth, and against himself, and save him back into his 
place in the Eternal Purpose, which is his inheritance 
and his dower. 

When, therefore, we repeat our belief in the words of 
the Creed that set forth the tragedy of the cross, we 
mean that Christ was made this demonstration as the 
only way in which man could realize and recover from 
his delirium and look sanely at the facts of his being, 
and that in doing this He is the world’s Redeemer. 
“ Lo I come (in the volume of the book it is written of 
me) to do Thy will, 0 God.”* 

In what does this process of redemption consist ? It 
must have referred to the whole of humanity, not a 
part. 11 must be universal at least in its application. 
It must mean as much to one man as to another, since 
all are created in the image of God. 

What was the nature of this sacrifice ? 

It was not simply the death upon the cross, as much 
of the popular language of the pulpit and the schools 
would lead us to infer. In that sense the world has had 
truly many saviours. Many a man has died that other 
men might live. 

It is Christlike in the pilot who dies at his post while 
* Heb. 10 : 7. 


54 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


saving the lives of hundreds under his charge in a burn¬ 
ing ship, but he is not like Christ in the sense we are 
considering. Of martyrs the world has a long and 
growing beadroll. The cross upheld a Martyr, but if 
it upheld nothing more, then nothing happened on Cal¬ 
vary that has not happened in every generation since. 

Neither was He merely a substitute for the race, a 
gross and rational conception that would make Chris¬ 
tianity a reactionary form of Judaism, for Judaism con¬ 
fined its bloody sacrifices to goats and calves and lambs 
of the flock. 

It was a vicarious sacrifice without being a substitu¬ 
tion. If the reason revolts at the vicarious idea, it must 
still be recalled that this idea was not imported into the 
thought of man by Christianity. It is as old as man. 
Neither is it wholly maintained by Christianity. It 
enters the experience of all men everywhere. 

I do not pretend to understand why. But as Christ 
embodies the vicarious idea in His redemption of man, 
I see in it an evidence again of Hi3 being the perfect 
man, not leaving out of His calculation and process any 
human element, even this apparently needless one. 

Vicarious suffering is a law of human intercourse. If 
the reason revolts, it is revolting at a fact of life, not at 
a superstition of religion. Salvation through the suffer¬ 
ing and at the cost of others is the scientific theory of 
the survival of the fittest. 

The sacrifice of Christ was not instead of man, as the 
pilot dying at his burning post, while bringing his vessel 
to land, but with him and as his representative. Christ 
dies not apart from man, but a part of man. He is the 
Head of the Body of which we are members. The blood 


THE SON - OF MAH—THE ATONEMEMT. 


55 


of Christ, so often used in a grossly materialistic sense, is 
a typical phrase. It stands for Life. In the Old Testa¬ 
ment the blood of a sacrificial animal stands not for the 
dead body, but for the Life poured out. The Blood of 
Christ is the Life of Christ. Calvary marks only one 
point in that life. When St. Paul says that he will 
know nothing save Christ crucified in his preaching, he 
surely does not mean that the physical death upon the 
cross is the world’s redemption, else why enlarge upon 
the Resurrection, as in the fifteenth chapter of First 
Corinthians ? 

I have said that man was ignorant of the thraldom 
involved in his disobedience, although parts of it touched 
him hardly here and there, in physical penalty. Christ’s 
sacrificial life was man’s redemption from this thraldom. 

The great transaction of the cross was an object-lesson 
in God’s love. 

How ? 

Christ, the perfect man, died openly the victim of a 
world that with all its culture, all its matchless achieve¬ 
ment, all its religious accomplishment, could not and 
did not know the way of its highest realization. The 
world by its wisdom did not know God. Without such 
knowledge the world could not know itself, and was 
adrift, purposeless, in a universe without meaning. 

The world nailed Perfect Goodness to the Cross. It 
was the world’s judgment of the highest and the best. 
The Cross was the last term in human disobedience. 

A man had lived and acted absolutely according to 
God’s ideal of human life, subjecting the human to the 
divine at all points. 

He did this at the cost of a mangled body and an- 


56 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


guished soul. He tasted of death. He did not merely 
drink the draught that kills and terminates, but tasted 
of its bitter agony. There was no apparent human 
reason why this perfect man, the embodiment of human 
goodness, should hang upon the cross, and yet He felt 
the pain and shame of that death. He felt the shame 
the more because of His innocence of shame-worth. 
Hanging there between earth and sky, no sympathy rose 
to Him from the one, no sign fell to Him from the 
other. The shame and scorn of the world which rejects 
Him, He is for a moment deserted in outward seeming 
by the Heaven, His eternal dwelling place. 

He, too—the evidence is in the cry of Eloi —must 
walk by faith and not by sight. Man who followed 
Him should find footprints in every inch of the way. 

This, then, was the world’s judgment of goodness ! 
Slowly, very slowly, the shock of Calvary made itself 
felt among men, and slowly, but inevitably the world 
arraigned itself for its own action. 

The reaction from the tragedy of the Cross was man’s 
practical laying hold of the atoning sacrifice. This 
death (articulated with what preceded and followed, 
but with the Cross as the accented fact) fixed Christ as 
the Supreme One in human minds. 

When men saw that the result of their education and 
civilization was the rejection of One who alone could 
give meaning and purpose to life, they paused and asked 
themselves where their laws and habits and methods and 
ideas were leading them. They came to a consciousness 
of the deaf ears and blind eyes that had prevented them 
from recognizing the God-Father’s revelation in the 
Only Son, to the knowledge that the object of all their 


THE SON - OF MAH—THE ATOMEMEHT. 


57 


striving had been within their grasp and slipped from 
them. The answer to the age-old questioning whence, 
why, and whither had been ringing in their ears un¬ 
heeded. God had come to His own, and His own had 
rejected Him. 

I do not mean, of course, that Jew and Gentile saw 
this the day after the crucifixion, or that mankind re¬ 
alized it in these words and after this fashion. The 
atonement is not a completed work, strictly speaking, 
until all men before and after Christ have appreciated it. 
The meaning of Cavalry dawned slowly upon the world. 
We may reverently doubt if we know more than a tithe 
of its awful truth yet. When we feebly strive to grasp 
infinity we say, “ He saves to the uttermost.’’ But 
what does “ salvation” mean in the mind of Christ, and 
what is the divine synonym for the human “ uttermost” ? 

This, however, came to men in various ways, as it 
comes still, that it was the Only Son who had done this 
thing in obedience to the God-Father’s will and purpose 
that men should know Him. He sacrificed Himself, 
gave His human body to be crushed and mangled by the 
world’s judgment, that we. His earth brothers, might 
see in His sufferings the depth of sin into which this 
world had fallen. 

The logical result of the sham life of humanity was 
seen in the Cross as its ultimate. 

But both Jewish and Pagan manhood had a latent 
unity with the goodness that was crucified. The cruci¬ 
fixion of Christ, then, was not on the part of His ene¬ 
mies the judicial murder or just punishment of a man, 
but was the failure of manhood, the degradation of 
man, the marring of the divine image. 


58 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


The revolt from this was the turning point in the 
spiritual ascent of man. Since Calvary that ascent 
has been slow and not always direct. There have been 
descents as well. The line of progress is undulatory. 
The process of ascent we call the Redemption of the 
world through Christ. 

Doubtless there is much back of those things which 
do appear. It is in these dark recesses that much the¬ 
ology is woven for our wearing. But with that mystery 
of God’s secret part in the evolution of His earth chil¬ 
dren through Christ, we are content not to speculate 
overmuch. He may have His meaning, too, even for 
the words we bandy about so freely in pulpits and books 
—a meaning beyond our ken. 

One would like to know how far and wide and deep a 
meaning the human word redemption has in His mind. 
We can only exult and be exceeding glad to believe that 
He means more by it than we do. 

Redemption from the human point of view has been 
going on since those first years a.d., creeping into and 
permeating humanity, making it more and more at one 
with God. 

But not because Christ went forth in human flesh to 
execution. 

1. Christ, the whole Christ from Bethlehem to Cal¬ 
vary, showed unto men not only the depth of degrada¬ 
tion to which they had fallen, but the heights to which 
they must rise. The temptation in the wilderness is an 
object-lesson of man’s innate power to subdue the beast 
part and exalt the divine part. After Christ no man 
need crawl who wished to stand erect, which is redemp¬ 
tion, the awakening of man to the fact that the knowl- 


THE SON OF MAN—THE ATONEMENT. 59 

edge of God, his passionate desire, is to be found only 
in the realization of personal sonship. The parables of 
the Fall and of the Prodigal Son are complements of 
each other. 

2. Christ gave an ultimate meaning to the whole of 
manhood by including the so-called ills of humanity, 
pain, misery, death itself, as necessary parts in the de¬ 
velopment of humanity. After Christ no man may 
shrink from his share of the seamy side of life, as though 
it were an alien and hateful thing. The whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth ; shall any part be exempt ? 
But in the groaning and the travail the Cross has im¬ 
parted meaning, “ waiting for the adoption, to wit, the 
redemption of our body.”* So man is redeemed from 
the abyss of fear, where there is no God-Father, only 
cruel and relentless fate. 

3. Christ somehow came as a spiritual potency, fer¬ 
tilizing human nature, or rather the germ of divine 
nature in the human, and so bringing real life and im¬ 
mortality to light. He led man on the way back to 
God, by uncovering the blurred and stained image of his 
Maker, and in His own person showing that man’s 
place is with God, not apart from Him. 

He taught man how, while yet a child of time, to in¬ 
herit eternal life, which is simply the knowledge of God. 
Man had been vaguely and imperfectly striving after this 
knowledge by gifts of propitiation and acts of sacrifice. 

Christ taught, and this is the supreme lesson of the 
cross and the sacrifice thereof, that as in the volume of 
the book it was written of Him, to do the will of God is 


* Rom. 8 : 28. 


60 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


the duty of man, and in the sacrifice of the human to 
the divine idea and ideals lies Redemption, in all its 
length and breadth and depth and height, so far as man 
can see. 

In conclusion, then, we observe that Christ’s bringing 
of God and man together—His atonement—is rationally 
and spiritually possible because He, our Master, is the 
head and representative of the race. Man epitomizes 
in himself all the lower creation, including animal, plant, 
and dust of the earth. Christ, as the perfect man, 
epitomizes in Himself man, and redeems him from what¬ 
ever ills or errors he may have accreted, by bringing him 
in His own person back to the Father’s House, which is 
His dwelling-place. 

All men, disobedient through Adam by the scientific 
and spiritual doctrine of heredity, were away from and 
ignorant of God, a state in which their manhood was 
deformed, their powers limited, their moral purpose in 
the universe confused. 

All men obedient through this new line of descent are 
led back to that communion with God, in which alone 
they are sons of the house. It is not a magical process 
of charm and fetich by which this is accomplished. 

It is, even in and through Christ, an evolution and 
development. There is struggle, there is stress, there 
is pain, there is puzzle and bewilderment. Achieve¬ 
ments that are worth while to the natural man come not 
without cost. The highest achievement of the spiritual 
man is not a holiday ramble. 

We are saved by Christ only in conformity to Christ. 
The Only Son is the only mould in which other sons 
may hope to see the God-Father. It is, as we put it in 


THE SOM OF MAH—THE ATOMEMEMT. 


61 


our prayers, “ for His sake,” because He is the only 
standard of sonship that God can take to Himself. 

As the soldier dies in battle for, but not instead of 
his countrymen who are fighting by his side, so Christ 
died upon the cross for, but not instead of men, and 
becomes a part of the victory of man. Thus was death 
swallowed up in victory. Man laying hold of His vic¬ 
tory grows into oneness with the Father. As day by 
day he fashions himself, in failures and successes, after 
the One who has beaten down temptation and conquered 
sin by refusing it existence in Him, so day by day he is 
making of the atonement not a figment of theology, but 
a personal fact of life. 

So we are saved by faith. Hot a formula of words re¬ 
peated as a charm, but as we journey, by realizing that 
God is in this world reconciling it (including man) to 
Himself. Because we believe this, we have the victory 
over every foe who may rise before us. 

The sons of a Father-God who believe that He is in 
His world, and in every part of it, are already the heirs 
of eternal life. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 

“ He descended into hell. ” Apostles' Creed. 

“ By which also He went and preached unto the spirits in 
prison.” 1 Pot. 3 :19. 

“ The very abhorrence with which a man’s better mind ever 
looks upon his worse, while it inflicts his punishment begins his 
cure ; and we can never allow that God will suspend this natu¬ 
ral law impressed by Himself on our spiritual constitution merely 
in order to stop the process of moral recovery and especially enable 
Him to maintain the eternity of torment and of sin.” 

James Martineau. 

There are four propositions to be considered under 
this general statement : The place referred to; the 
reason for the descent; what Jesus Christ did while 
there ; the result. 

The place. There is an explanatory rubric in the 
Book of Common Prayer permitting the use of an alter¬ 
nate phrase for the one in the body of the text. This 
phrase is, “ He went into the place of departed spirits, 
which are considered as words of the same meaning in 
the Creed.” The “ place,” therefore, is not the vulgar 
“ hell” of traditional theology. 

A place of departed spirits where the dead abide, in 
some shape or no shape, is not distinctively a Christian 
doctrine. The pagans generally, and the Greeks specifi- 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 63 


cally, for purpose of illustration, held a similar article 
of faith. The Greek Hades (the Creed word) was the 
abode of the dead, and was divided into Elysium, or the 
land of the blessed, and Tartarus, the place of the 
damned. 

The Jew’s conception of Sheol was similar to the 
Greek doctrine, Gehenna corresponding to Tartarus. 

The early Christian doctrine was, that between death 
and the final resurrection and consummation of all tem¬ 
poral symbols, when, as St. Paul says, God shall be all 
in all, every last enemy destroyed, including sin and 
death,* there is an intermediate state, where the disem¬ 
bodied souls of all (not some) men wait. The general 
name for this state is Hades, which is the word used in 
the Creed. But Hades, according to the Christian be¬ 
lief, was divided into two parts, a smaller Hades, as cor¬ 
responding to Tartarus and Gehenna, and Paradise, cor¬ 
responding to the Greek Elysium. 

This with modifications and qualifications has been 
the faith of the whole Christian Church from the time 
of its earliest recorded literature. All souls freed from 
their human bodies dwell in the unknown Land between 
Time and Eternity, some in happiness, some in misery, 
awaiting in rhetorical language “ the last trump.” 

That there is nothing irrational in this is self-evident. 
It is only another form of the state in which embodied 
souls dwell upon the earth, awaiting the summons of 
the God-Father. 

This doctrine has been qualified, however, as I have 
said. We must distinguish between the Intermediate 


* 1 Cor. 15 : 24-28. 


64 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


State of early Christianity and the Purgatory, which 
was evolved from it as a later growth of ecclesiasticism. 

Purgatory, which is a tenet of modern Roman Catholi¬ 
cism, like every other doctrine which has held the atten¬ 
tion or respect of men for any length of time, has its 
germ of truth. It is a perverted Intermediate State. 
It became a doctrine for the temporal profit of the 
Roman See, and its abuse in practice was one of the 
many moving forces of the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century. So far and widespread was the popular im¬ 
pression concerning the sale and purchase of spiritual 
commodities, represented by Tetzel and his indulgence 
peddling, that it was thought desirable even by the 
Council of Trent to repudiate the popular impression, 
that, as administered by the Roman See, the doctrine 
of purgatory was exploited for revenue mainly. 

The truth germ in purgatory is actually the Catholic 
doctrine of the Intermediate State. 

Souls are purged in that land Between, but the purg¬ 
ing is not controlled by the Bishop who wears the tiara 
of the Vatican. The gold and silver and copper of the 
material earth are not current in the spiritual world. 
An “ indulgence” is not only an intellectual affront to 
intelligence, but a spiritual absurdity. 

But the place of purgation remains as a fact of the 
rational Christian’s Creed, and we can even see how out 
of it grew the extraordinary claims of the Roman See. 

The popular purgatory was a revolt against the doc¬ 
trine of endless torment. This horrible travesty on the 
nature of God and structure of man has never approved 
itself to the common sense of humankind. As it grew 
up amid other anomalies, the human mind and con- 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 65 


science could not bear the strain put upon them. No 
man could contemplate the thought of his mother or 
his child tossing on billows of flame forever and ever. 
Some relief must be found, and it came in the doctrine 
that, for a consideration, the time of punishment might 
be shortened or altogether abolished. Purgatory was a 
limited liability according to the extent of one’s purse. 
The divorce of cause and effect was not apparently 
noticed. The moral confusion between “ whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap,”* and the pecuniary 
arrangement for no-harvest was not observed. 

The place, therefore, is that portion of the universe, 
speaking in terms of time and space, where abide our 
dead, who, yesterday or ages ago, passed from the 
human sight into the divine keeping. 

The reason for the Descent. 

Why did Jesus Christ, the Only Son, the Perfect Man, 
descend into this Place ? 

To carry out and complete all the conditions of the 
Incarnation, which, making Him man, involved Him in 
every experience of humanity. He must touch the 
whole gamut of human life. He must suffer anguish, 
die, and He must also take His place among the disem¬ 
bodied spirits. The descent into Hades is the continu¬ 
ation of His humanity under all the limitations of the 
flesh. After death, as well as before and in death, He 
must partake personally of all that went to make up 
human life and shape human destiny. Whatever can be 
at any time a necessary experience of man must also be 
His, or He is no true man at all. 


* Gal. 6 : 7. 


66 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


He descended, as all men must descend, into hell. 
What did Jesus Christ while there ? 

There is no more fascinating subject of speculation 
than the life and method of the other world. There is 
a magnet in the Timeless Land that draws the children 
of Time to its borders, only to look over with peering, 
questioning eyes into the darkness. Oh, the human 
hunger to feed upon those mysteries ! 

But it is not all vain speculation. 

We have no glimpse of their occupations, those souls 
who have gone before into the larger and freer life 
which must come with the dropping of this body of the 
flesh. But if the Scriptures are true, and if human 
character is unchanged in its essence by death, we do 
know what Jesus Christ did while lingering among those 
“ who had one time been disobedient. ” 

He preached there. 

In 1 Pet. 3 : 19 so we read : “ By which also He went 
and preached unto the spirits in prison ; which some¬ 
time were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of 
God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a 
preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved 
by water .’ 9 

In the same book, chapter 4:6: “ For for this cause 
was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead, 
that they might be judged according to men in the 
flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” 

He preached the Gospel— i.e. f the good news of God. 
It is a thought to thrill the coolest brain, to stir the 
pulse of the most indifferent, to inspire with hope the 
most despairing heart. 

Thou Blessed Christ of God, still standing in the 


’THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 67 

midst ! We saw and heard Thee on Thy earthly jour¬ 
ney ! We marked Thy mortal anguish on the cross ! 
Was that not enough ? Nay, but Thou art straitened 
till Thy whole ministry is accomplished ! Thou must 
preach also to the disobedient, who had not known the 
Father-God in the old times. 

What did He preach ? The Gospel, of course, but in 
what manner ? 

There would be no reason for this question were it 
not that a hard, material, well-nigh pagan conception of 
life and death has been fastened upon and read into the 
Creed. 

This conception of life and death declares that a man’s 
education ends at the grave. The popular idea is 
“ probation,” but there is nothing in Christ’s teaching 
to lead us to suppose that God put us into this world on 
probation. 

On probation for what ? Another life ? But why 
probation ? Does God need to try experiments ? Is 
man a problem to God as well as to himself ? 

Education is another word and expresses a different 
idea. It means that God is leading us, ourselves being 
the instruments of our progress in relation to and con¬ 
nection with our environment toward His ideal for us. 
He is bound by this as much as we are. 

Probation means practically, whatever fine-spun meta¬ 
physical theory may be woven about it, that God is not 
certain that many of His creatures will be fit to stand 
before Him at His right hand ; therefore He puts us on 
probation to try. Rational Christianity cannot teach 
God after that fashion. There could have been no un¬ 
certainty in the mind of God when He made man in 


68 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


His own image, and the Only Son is His justification, 
even from our limited point of view. 

Life is an education, and only remotely a probation. 

The traditional view of human life is, that accounts 
are made up with the passing bell, and that the spirit of 
God strives no longer with or for the one for whom it 
tolls. For those who have not believed in Christ as 
their Saviour, after the language of the Athanasian 
symbol, there is no further progress. God’s life is 
withdrawn. His image is blotted out. His breath 
ceases. He has had His use of one whom He made the 
temple of the Holy Ghost, and now because the man 
has not seen the use, or rebelled against it, he is turned 
over to the devil and all his angels, to despair and end¬ 
less hopelessness, to the smouldering fires that burn for¬ 
ever and the gnawing worms that die not. 

This used to be taught as Christianity. 

If it be true or anything like truth, then some of our 
theologians are right when they say that the subject of 
Christ’s preaching in Hades was the announcement of a 
gospel of good news to poor creatures who in the nature 
of things could not benefit by it. 

Also if it be true, God is not a Father. 

There are three variations of this view of Christ’s 
4 4 gospel” to the departed, either one of which may be 
exactly orthodox, but all of which seem to me to be 
equally earthly, sensual, and devilish. 

(a) He delivered a merely formal announcement of 
what He, being the Son of God, had accomplished from 
Bethlehem to Calvary. This as a matter (I speak as 
reverently as the subject will admit) of information. 

(&) He preached to spirits so hardened that even His 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 69 


words could not move them. Which would seem to be 
a self-belittling work for the Son of God. 

(c) He preached a message of denunciation, declaring 
the wrath of God upon their former disobedience. This 
on the lips of a man to men who were fixed in their dis¬ 
obedience by immutable laws would be a cruelty incon¬ 
ceivable. 

These alternate theories are the repugnant positions 
into which men are logically forced who proceed from a 
premise that involves a fallacy—viz., that death strikes 
the balance-sheet in such an extraordinary way, that 
while men may grow better who are good in that last 
hour, those who are not quite good can only grow worse. 
But Jesus Christ related a parable in which He taught 
that a man who is worthy of “ torments” at death may 
grow in grace and in the knowledge of God and in love 
for his brother even in the midst of his torments. 

Dives, begging Father Abraham to warn his earth 
brothers of the inevitable punishment of sin, was a long 
way in advance, morally and therefore spiritually, of 
Dives so selfish as not to know about or think of Lazarus 
lying at his gate. 

Now the words of Jesus preaching to Dives and Judas 
and others are not given. But St. Peter, whose judg¬ 
ment and accuracy we do not dispute in other details, 
says that He preached the Gospel. And the Gospel is 
and always has been, when preached purely as Christ 
would preach it, the good news of God. There are only 
two texts given, and from them any one with a theory 
may construct his proposition. 

I take an appeal away from the texts, that on the sur¬ 
face do seem to support the view of these pages, to the 


70 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


whole manifestation of God as set forth in the New 
Testament, and through which runs one awful, blessed, 
illuminating, inspiring message—God is love. He is 
just, merciful, hating sin with a deathless hatred, of 
purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and yet all these are 
parts of a larger whole which is Love. 

Now what will God in Christ do, standing in the 
midst of all that flotsam and jetsam of humanity called 
disobedient, the battered hulks and starved souls of men 
who have not known God, nor cared to know Him, from 
ignorance, wilfulness, or despair ? 

What will Christ of God say to these ? What must 
have been the Gospel which Jesus of Nazareth would 
preach in these ears ? 

We are rationally justified in drawing inferences from 
character—of Judas one thing, of St. Paul another, of 
Christ, what ? 

That always and everywhere He would be about His 
Father’s business; witnessing of the Father’s love for 
His children ; lifting up the standard of Sonship ; win¬ 
ning souls by the sweet reasonableness of His own exam¬ 
ple, to rest back into the everlasting arms. 

But it is inconceivable that He would give stones for 
bread. 

Christ preaching a gospel shorn of its power to draw 
men into their relationship with Himself and His 
Father is not the Jesus, Son of Mary, whom we heard 
utter the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Lost Sheep, 
and the mislaid Piece of Silver. 

I do not mean to be dogmatic. Most things are possi¬ 
ble, even most improbable things. I may be wrong, God 
knows ! but I cannot believe Christ to have been a dif- 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 71 

ferent character in that midway Land from what He was 
cm earth, and what we believe Him to be now. 

We may thank God, then, that this article of the 
Creed may be rationally and spiritually approved by the 
mind and conscience, for it holds out the blessed hope 
that God’s mercy reaches farther than man’s judgment, 
and that His redemption has a deeper and wider appli¬ 
cation than can be measured by a human life of three¬ 
score years and ten. 

The result of this preaching of Christ ! 

It is from this that traditional theology draws back in 
affright. It seems to prove too much and to carry a 
too radical conclusion. 

Rational Christianity admits the conclusion with a 
grateful spirit. 

That men who have not known God on earth, or who, 
knowing about Him, have rejected Him, and dying in 
that state (including both moral and intellectual athe¬ 
ism), may learn of God in the clearer light and wider 
knowledge of spiritual existence, this is our conclusion. 
That whenever or wherever, now or hereafter, a man 
turns from his idols toward God, he will find God’s face 
turned toward him, and a way to Him plain. That the 
Prodigal is not forced to dwell always with the swine 
because he was once and for a long time a fool and a 
spendthrift, but may always come to himself and go 
back, not to an inferior station among the servants, but 
to his own place in his Father’s house. 

There are many who heartily wish this were true for 
them, but who are so ingrained from childhood in the 
traditional view that the proposition of what they call 
“ probation” after death is little short of blasphemy. 


72 


THE PACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


Moreover, it is looked upon as a dangerous doctrine 
to teach concerning the future life. Bat truth is never 
dangerous. It is often painfal and bitter. It hurts and 
sears, but it never kills. It rather makes alive. The 
doctrine of “ Eternal Hope” only seems “ dangerous,” 
because the opposite has been taught as infallible, and 
because endless torment has been read into Christianity 
as a necessary manifestation of God’s law, to disbelieve 
which is to invite the anathemas of the Athanasian 
Creed, which are supposed to “ run,” in legal phrase, 
in the other world. 

There are three possible theories of future punishment 
for which respectable grounds may be found in the 
words of the Scriptures. 

As the result of Christ’s preaching is bound up with 
the truth or falsehood, or partial truth and falsehood of 
these theories, we will discuss them briefly in order. 

1. It is conceivable that the impenitent wicked at 
death have no farther opportunity for repentance, but 
are held by an omnipotent God in endless misery. It 
used to be a corollary of this that the just who dwell in 
endless happiness have their joy deepened and sweetened 
by the knowledge of the agony of the damned. Heaven 
was a happier place because of hell. Some of the most 
logical traditionalists hold this yet. 

This theory of the endless torment of the impenitent 
sinner at death is based upon certain passages of the 
New Testament, which seem to declare it in no uncertain 
terms, of which the following is the chief example : 
“ And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, 
but the righteous into life eternal.”* 

* Matt. 25 : 46. 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 73 

The qualifying adjective “ everlasting’ ’ is the point 
to be observed, although it is not my purpose to thresh 
over the old argument concerning the use of the Greek 
aioviovy further than is necessary to the illustration of 
my point. 

There is a decided difference in the meaning of the 
English word Everlasting and the Greek Eternal in the 
New Testament. The translators of the King James 
version confused them and made them synonyms. The 
Revised Version of 1880, a much more accurate reading 
of the Greek, corrects this confusion by substituting 
Eternal for Everlasting in such passages -as that above 
quoted. This indicates, of course, an essential differ¬ 
ence in the meaning of the words. When these altera¬ 
tions occur, the word Eternal has no reference to dura¬ 
tion of time, but expresses rather a quality, a condition 
emphasized without reference to time, as when we speak 
of the Eternal God. 

We are not left to mere speculation, however. 

Jesus Himself has explained what He meant by eter¬ 
nal life. It is the knowledge of God, not endless exist¬ 
ence. 

In that great and awful prayer in St. John’s Gospel 
He said : “ And this is life eternal, that they might 
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
Thou hast sent.”* 

Eternal life is the knowledge of God, which comes 
through His manifestation or interpretation in Jesus 
Christ. 

It follows that eternal death is ignorance of God. 
Eternal punishment is a punishment conditioned by the 


* St. John 17 :3. 


74 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


subject’s ignorance of God. When one grows to know, 
eternal life dawns. It is a question of state, not of 
duration. 

The adjective eternal means the same, whether it is 
applied to life or death. As eternal life is the perfec¬ 
tion of creation, the life abundant, sent to man by the 
God-Father, through the epiphany of Jesus Christ, 
eternal death is man’s failure to lay hold of that life. 
Life is knowledge. Death is ignorance. 

Shall not the ignorant learn ? 

The Church does not insist upon endless torment as 
an article of faith. The Apostles’ Creed, which is our 
symbol of relationship to God, says nothing about it. 
But the Church of England, from which we inherit our 
formularies, and out of which all modern Protestant 
bodies have quarried their articles of religious belief, 
has expressly left the matter an open question by not 
only declining to make an affirmation, but by withhold¬ 
ing an affirmation already made. 

The convocations of 1563 and 1571. (Elizabeth), re¬ 
viewing the forty-two articles of religion adopted under 
Edward VI., 1553, a period of transition and of violent 
prejudice, hot passion and hasty generalization, reduced 
the number of articles from forty-two to thirty-nine, and 
eliminated the forty-second, which was a practical affirma¬ 
tion of the doctrine of everlasting torment for the im¬ 
penitent. 

The Scriptures are so far from clear on the subject, 
and the Church having left the question open, no sober 
and devout Christian man need be harassed or worried 
about his spiritual condition if he finds himself, as so 
many do, revolting from the mediaeval tradition and 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 75 


turning his eyes toward the wider boundaries of the 
Larger Hope. 

But what of the worm that dieth not and the fires 
that are not quenched ?* 

This is rhetoric, illustration. Outside of Jerusalem 
was the valley of Hinnom, where offal was consumed, 
and the smoke of its burning ascended continually. 
The fire burned for the health of the community. Fresh 
bodies of dead animals were always being added to the 
smouldering heap. The worms gnawed on and the 
fires ate ever away, but both worms and fire were instru¬ 
ments of purification, not engines of destruction. 
Worms and fire act exactly this way outside the valley 
of Hinnom. The fire of the Spirit of God burns on 
forever (until the consummation, when it will be no 
longer needed), purging man ceaselessly of sin, and 
making him worthy of his immortal destiny by destroy¬ 
ing, as by fire, the mortal dross that clogs and retards 
his development, f 

Christ used the worms and the fire, as Isaiah J had 
used them long before Him, and in the same sense that 
He used the expression “ Abraham’s bosom” for Heaven. 
As God long “ winked at” the ignorance of the times, 
so God’s Son accommodated Himself to the people He 
addressed by using their language, their illustrations, 
even their blunders. He was not teaching science, his¬ 
tory, or literature ; He was teaching Life, and this only 
in a language “ understood of the people.” 

These are the facts as I read them concerning the 
scriptural statements upon which the theory of endless 


* St. Mark 9 : 44, 46, 48. 


f Note 9, p. 228. % Isa. 66 : 24. 


76 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


torment is based. Aside from them, however, there 
are two great objections on general principles to God’s 
authorship of such a fate for His children, however 
wicked, vile, and unchildlike they may be at the hour 
of death. 

The first objection is scientific. God is the great 
economist. He has a use for every atom of His crea¬ 
tion. Powerful as man is, he cannot destroy a single 
pinhead of material matter. It would be a waste of 
material, which we do not observe in God’s dealings 
with His creation elsewhere, for God to so use His own 
image. It would be (I mean reverently) an immoral 
waste of material. A man would not raise his son to 
make a failure of his life if he had the power to show 
the son how to make a success of it. 

And in this connection we must consider how much 
is involved in the traditional belief. It means that the 
vast majority of men must sutler forever and ever. The 
greater part of the family of God must dwell in the far 
country with the swine of their own choice, even though 
at some time they might choose to arise and go to their 
Father. What a waste of material, to say nothing more ! 
Intellect, knowledge, splendid achievements in every 
field of human effort, all brought to the harvest, and 
then thrown into the fire. 

And this is alleged of God, who numbers the hairs of 
our heads, notes the fall of the sparrow, and uses for a 
wise and beautiful purpose the squeezed orange which a 
man casts aside. 

Such a God must have one law for one part of His 
universe and another for another. 

We reject the idea that God is a wastrel. The Bible 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 77 


of science, the records of rock formation, gives the denial 
to those who need it. 

The moral objection is stronger even than the scien¬ 
tific. If the theory as held by traditional theology be 
true, God has belied Himself. The words are weighed. 

For if it be true all men have not an equal chance in 
the struggle of life ; the Father has favorites in His 
Family. 

There is what passes for argument which expresses 
itself after this fashion, “ that every one has the oppor¬ 
tunity to know God and embrace Christ if he will, and 
if he is obstinate, it is his fault, not God’s, and he brings 
his own punishment on himself.” “ In the place where 
the tree falleth” [this is a favorite “ proof text”] “ there 
it shall be.”* 

This may be quite true of a tree, but a man may get 
up and walk even if he is badly hurt by his fall. 

But in what does this argument involve us ? 

The heathen to begin with. The traditional answer is a 
modification of the extreme statement in the case of the 
heathen. They may be saved by the living up to the 
light they have (this was conceded by traditionalism only 
after a long struggle). But if one concession is made, 
there is no end of the concessions that may be demanded. 

The heathen in Africa cannot be more in God’s 
thought than the heathen in our slums and palaces. 
Men do not necessarily hear “ the Gospel” who hear 
preaching and worship nominally in our churches. The 
Pharisees, many of them did not hear at all. The poor 
wrecks of humanity, stunted, cramped, the promise of 


* Eccles. 11: 3. 


78 


THE FACTS AKD THE FAITH. 


their manhood stultified by their environment—on whose 
dull ears fall the names sacred to us by long custom and 
hallowed usage—these do not “ hear.” And on this 
earth they have not a chance to hear. Their bodies are 
calloused, their minds undeveloped, their souls steeped 
in ignorance, their affections perverted, their higher 
potencies atrophied. 

God’s children these are ; what of them ? Lost ? 
They are those of whom Jesus told the parable of the 
Good Shepherd, and we read that He went until He 
found the lost one, and put it in His bosom or on His 
shoulder. 

If God has stopped working, if John’s vision on 
Patmos closed the outpouring of the life of God into 
His world, then we may have to take refuge in some 
such loveless, hopeless, godless theory as that nine tenths 
of our common humanity were created to become puzzles 
to themselves, perplexities to God, afflictions to the uni¬ 
verse, and to continue thus forever. 

But Jesus said, “ My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
work.”* “ Lo, I am with you always, even unto the 
end of the world. ”f And the sorely troubled heart of 
many a mother takes comfort in the knowledge that no 
sheep can wander too far for the Heavenly Shepherd to 
seek him, either in this world or any other, God being 
the maker of worlds and the Father of men. 

2. It is conceivable, in the second place, that while 
God may not consign a part of His Family to endless 
suffering, that He may find some who are unalterably 
impenitent, and to them will come the second death. 


* St. John 5 :17. 


f Matt. 28 : 20. 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 79 


This is annihilation or the theory of Conditional Im¬ 
mortality. 

If it is possible for a human will to finally resist the 
mighty love of God, to stand deliberately outside the 
Father’s house, saying, “ Evil be thou my good”—if 
that be possible, then annihilation is both spiritually 
and scientifically logical. 

For everything having part in the universe must have 
a use. But the man who will deliberately not know 
God under any schooling has no use. He is not ulti¬ 
mately a warning to others (as in time and space he is) ; 
he has no place in the constantly progressing purpose of 
God ; he has no resource in himself. He must go to 
his own place, a burned-out cinder on the shrivelled slag 
mass of a burned-out world. 

This is conditional upon a theory that any man can 
finally prefer no-God to God, that any man can ulti¬ 
mately remove himself from a share in the accomplish¬ 
ment of that “divine far-off event toward which the 
whole creation moves.” 

3. But is it possible that any one will resist God 
until the end, and finally refuse to be redeemed back 
into his own place as a member of the common family ? 

The Scriptures here and there throw brighter and 
fairer gleams of light upon the hereafter than are indi¬ 
cated by the alternatives of endless torment or condi¬ 
tional immortality. 

In that magnificent argument for the resurrection of 
the body, contained in the fifteenth chapter of his First 
Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul seems to be the Seer 
of the Larger Hope. 

“ Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered 


80 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


up the kingdom to God, even the Father ; when he shall 
have put down all rule and all authority and all power. 

“ For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies 
under His feet. 

* ‘ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 

16 And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, 
then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him 
that put all things under Him, that God may he all in 
all.”* 

And again is the same noble letter :f 

“ For other foundation can no man lay than that is 
laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build 
upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, 
wood, hay, stubble ; every man’s work shall be made 
manifest : for the day shall declare it, because it shall 
be revealed by fire ; and the fire shall try every man’s 
work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which 
he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If 
any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss ; 
but he himself shall be saved ; yet so as by fire.” 

The Epistle to the Ephesians teaches the same large 
truth of Restoration, the bringing back of man to his 
own place, the readjustment of the confusion of the 
Fall, the resumption of intercourse between God and 
His children, the return of Adam to the garden, strong 
in the achievement of his destiny, and before whom the 
sentinel cherubim with flaming swords shall turn aside and 
suffer him to enter where all things are now his, because 
he can now use and not abuse them. 

Jesus Himself, in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, 


* 1 Cor. 15 :24, 25, 26, 28. 


f 1 Cor. 3 :11-15. 


THE LARGER HOPE—THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 81 


already referred to, seems to indicate moral progress 
under the purifying flames of suffering. If Dives soft¬ 
ened from his hard selfishness, and God could look into 
that cleaner heart, what must God have done, whose 
nature it is to affiliate with goodness, and merge it with 
Himself ? 

It is possible for us to believe, then, that God always 
will hear the cry of the human and answer it; that the 
result of Christ’s preaching in Hades was the winning 
of souls to realize their sonship ; that they could change 
and did change their characters in that midway land; that 
no man’s education, whether it be in low levels or on 
the heights, ends with the grave, but that the Only Son 
is strong and the God-Father loving, and between them, 
by the aid of the Spirit of God, who gave life to primal 
chaos, they will enable all men to know the Father, to 
become sons, to get back home. 

But this is universalism ! St. Paul was a universal- 
ist, but he was something more. Names need not worry 
us. And the larger hope by no means excludes the fact 
of punishment. 

The law of punishment, however, is not “ in the place 
where the tree falleth there it shall be,” but “ whatsoever 
a man soweth that shall he also reap.” A man can sow 
everything but self-destruction. He is not his own, but 
God’s. He may mar his life, but not annihilate it. He 
may sow, as men do sow, tares and weeds, tares and weeds 
must he reap. But the harvest-time is a beginning as 
well as an end. After the harvest is gathered in, after 
the retribution, the paying back of agony, tears, pains, 
suffering, the Love of God, which burns like fire, in 
purifying the sins and stains of humanity, will one day 


82 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


have justified the creation by accomplishing the redemp¬ 
tion of man. 

“ I saw,” says the vision of George Fox, “ I saw there 
was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite 
ocean of light and love flowed over the ocean of dark¬ 
ness, and in that I saw the Infinite Love of God.” 


CHAPTER VI. 


THERE IS NO DEATH—THE RESURRECTION. 

“ The third day He rose again from the dead.” 

Apostles’ Greed. 

“ He is not here ; for He is risen, as He said.” 

St. Matt. 28 : 6. 

“ Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immor¬ 
tality to light through the Gospel.” 2 Tim. 1 :10. 

“ What the disciples experienced was not a subjective impres¬ 
sion, however spiritually correct—except in the same sense as all 
our physical perceptions are subjective. They saw not a ghost, 
but a body, which they handled and felt it to be built up of flesh 
and bones ; which uttered words ; which assimilated the food 
they offered it; which at frequent intervals during six weeks 
presented itself to them when assembled, as well as to single per¬ 
sons, and remained with them in conferences of long duration. 
The resurrection of our Lord brought them back into a living 
relation with material and palpable things.” 

Canon Mason. ' 

As the Incarnation is the fundamental, spiritual truth 
of Christianity, the Resurrection of Christ is the prime, 
objective, historical fact of Christian teaching and 
preaching. St. Paul’s proposition that unless Christ 
rose from the dead our hopes are vain is accepted by the 
Church as an axiom of religious doctrine. 

Again we are facing the supernatural. The Resur- 


84 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


rection of Christ was contrary to the observed working 
of a natural law. The truth-seeker must be as candid 
here as elsewhere. It does not enter into our purpose 
to avoid difficulties, and we need not expect to solve all 
doubts. Following the thought so far developed in 
these pages, there is a moral and rational necessity un¬ 
derlying this article of the Creed, and a moral demon¬ 
stration to be drawn from it. 

But the Kesurrection as an historical fact is out in the 
open. It was not a secret thing. It is capable, there¬ 
fore, of another sort of demonstration than that called 
moral—viz., historical evidence. 

We have, therefore, two sorts of evidence to offer, and 
two lines of thought to follow in considering this article 
of the Creed, each supplementing and witnessing to the 
truth of the other. 

Our first proposition is, that it was logically necessary 
for Jesus Christ, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born 
of the Virgin Mary, to complete the purpose and show 
forth the meaning of that Incarnation, which was to re¬ 
veal God to man, man to himself, and to demonstrate 
clearly man’s place in creation. 

Is the rich man’s tomb a logical or rational sequel to 
Bethlehem and Calvary ? Is the cross with no farther 
light upon it than the gray shadows of Good Friday a 
final solution of the life of Jesus of Nazareth ? Is the 
bleeding brow and pallid cheek of a sufferer the last 
analysis of God’s word in the beginning, “ Let us make 
man in our image ?” 

We instinctively revolt from such a conclusion. 

The Christian Church not only denies the truth of 
such a moral absurdity, but makes an affirmation, which 


THERE IS NO DEATH—THE RESURRECTION. 85 


at least carries man forward on that path of noble des¬ 
tiny ^nd high achievement which we naturally associate 
witn one called the Son of Man. 

He rose again from the dead. 

Death is not the ultimate of God’s life anywhere in 
His universe. We fasten our thought now upon this 
one demonstration of the fact which so nearly concerns 
every created soul. 

But there is an antecedent difficulty to be considered. 

If Christ rose from the dead, and came back even for 
an hour to His old haunts and His old companions, it 
was a variation of God’s mode of working in His world. 
It was a so-called miracle, which the doubtful mind 
resents. 

This difficulty has been already fully considered, and 
the reader’s attention is recalled to the fact that the 
prime miracle is not in variation of life forms, but in 
the creation of life. 

The Resurrection is a lesser miracle economically than 
the Incarnation, as the Incarnation is a lesser miracle 
than the Creation. 

Creation, or the outbreathing of God’s life in the 
world, was a beginning, an apparent break in the con¬ 
tinuity of development. The Incarnation was the 
brooding of already existing life on already existing 
matter, and the moulding of a body form for its mate¬ 
rial expression. The Resurrection is the persistence of 
this life, its continuance after the body form is laid 
aside. 

We repeat, then, that the greater miracle was that one 
against which science has no word of rational denial, 
the creation of life. This includes the lesser miracles. 


86 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


the Life’s mode of manifestation, or its temporary with¬ 
drawal from and resumption of its human image. 

It is true that this resurrection was not an ordinary 
procedure. But the life in question was not an ordinary 
life. It was God’s life in flesh perfectly expressing 
what other men were imperfectly expressing. Now we 
are led to believe by experience that as man realizes his 
merely earthly heritage, as he gains more and more by 
progress and development, the dominion of the earth, 
he rises above and is more and more superior to earthly 
conditions. A man flung into the middle of the ocean 
dies. But he lays the wand of his divine endowments 
over those waters, and waves it toward those heavens, 
and the forces that would otherwise devour him up alive 
are harnessed and controlled to his own use. It is nat¬ 
ural for the water to fill the lungs of a drowning man. 
Man on the deck of an ocean liner, as a supernatural 
being, has successfully interposed between the working 
of that law and himself. 

The life of God in Jesus Christ is superior to the life 
of God in all His creation, because it is a perfect ulti¬ 
mate. There is nothing beyond for it to achieve. 
Death dashes up and works its purpose on the body, He 
was crucified, dead, and buried ; but death is impotent 
against a perfect manifestation in human terms, or any 
terms, of that Infinite Eternal Energy from which all 
things proceed. 

The life left the body, as all life does. Could it gather 
a new body, its very own ? 

Remember its conceded powers. It moulds this body 
from the germ and gives it form in the womb. It is 
the master. We see instances of resuscitation from ap- 


THERE IS NO DEATH—THE RESURRECTION. 87 


parent death, which are an analogy, though not a per¬ 
fect illustration. Sleep and the awakening are less per¬ 
fect analogies. In resurrection, we are considering it 
must be borne in mind, no new miracle of creation, but 
continuance. It is a variation of law, but no one can 
say it is a breaking of law, unless the creation is the 
breaking of a law. 

The supreme energy, the moral intelligence back of 
all manifestations of life, and varying that manifestation 
as evolution has taught us, without breaking rudely in 
upon orderly development, can rationally vary Life’s 
mode of manifestation at one point of its progress as at 
another. 

But does not this involve that Creation, Incarnation, 
and the Resurrection are merely the working of a deeper 
law than man has so far been able to express in terms ? 

I believe it does, and that wonderful phrase, “ The 
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world/’ finds a 
part at least of its interpretation in this belief. We are 
rescued by it alike from a mechanical theory of religion, 
which makes God a being of disorder, under a system of 
“ special providences,” and from a rationalistic theory 
of science, which denies Him any being at all. 

When men begin to comprehend the spiritual applica¬ 
tion of the theory of evolution (which is not that God 
first made a monkey, and after a while the monkey be¬ 
came a man) they will rejoice in the perpetual miracle 
of God’s presence in His world, thrilling it with divine 
ideals, energizing and varying its life without violating 
the truth that through it all “ one unceasing purpose 
runs. ”* 


* Note 10, p. 229. 


88 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


The Resurrection, then, was a rational necessity of 
the Incarnation. The Son of man goes the way of all 
flesh—infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, and (as a 
part of His revelation and to complete one part of His 
ministry by appearing personally to departed souls) 
death, and beyond. 

But to reveal to man that man was to die was a per¬ 
fectly useless, needless, and, on the part of Jesus, absurd 
performance. Men knew that without any further 
demonstration. To direct men to a grave was not to 
direct them toward God, but to stop short of Him. 
Jesus’ life was a transcendent life merely as a human 
career, but that Life was only slightly better than the 
life of some others of the world’s Best, unless He could 
impart something of Life’s ultimate. 

Had He died and gone out of men’s ken, as others 
have done, had He remained upon the cross or in the 
grave, He was a manifestation of the failure of God’s 
life to compete victoriously with a negative enemy. If 
Christ did not return from the dead, what was the use 
of His life any more than that of St. John or St. Paul ? 
He must then have planted the seeds of hopes and de¬ 
sires that He knew, while He strewed them in the soil of 
men’s hearts, were destined to be blasted. 

We cannot disassociate here, Christ’s life and words 
from His resurrection or non-resurrection. He was 
either an impostor, a lunatic, or the One He proclaimed 
Himself to be. 

Men very often say, “ He was a good man, the Very 
Best, but He could not have risen from the dead.” 
But this good man said He would rise from the dead, 
and permeating every word and all of His human life is 


THERE IS HO DEATH—THE RESURRECTION. 89 


His insistence upon the fact that He and He alone can 
reveal God to man, going so far as to say, “ He that 
hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”* 

But He would not have taken men to the bottom of a 
grave to show them the Father. The moral necessity 
lay upon Him, God’s Only Son, to demonstrate that the 
thing men called their worst enemy was merely a detail 
in the development of man from a child of earth and 
time, into the sonship of God. He must conquer death, 
as an elder brother conquers the darkness which his little 
brother fears, by undergoing its pains and coming forth 
with a smile on his face. The Only Son deals with 
death, the last enemy, as He has dealt with former 
enemies, by showing that it is the servant of perfect 
manhood, not its master. 

Was it so irrational a thing that Christ should come 
back from the grave ? 

Resurrection was an expectation of humanity, not an 
abnormal occurrence. Christ rose on the third day 
after He was buried, differing from what most men ex¬ 
pect will happen after some fashion, only in the matter 
of time. 

We all expect to “ rise again” in some way, unless we 
deny the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which 
the greatest American evolutionist, Mr. John Fiske, 
declares to be “ a supreme act of faith in the reasonable¬ 
ness of God’s works. ”f 

He rose in a brief space, to that which we all look for¬ 
ward without at all feeling ourselves to be irrational. 
Three days was a short time. It is not briefer than is 


* St. John 14 : 9. 


f Note 11, p. 229. 


90 


THE PACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


possible now. In three days any one of us may be un¬ 
clothed and clothed upon. 

Is it the fact of the “ spiritual body” that confuses 
people ? Flesh and bones do not inherit the ultimate 
kingdom. There is a natural body which we know, and 
a spiritual body, concerning which we know nothing at 
all.* 

But that other body is as much a detail of fact as 
what clothes I shall wear if I go to Russia next summer. 
The principle is superior to its manifestations. A spir¬ 
itual body is not irrational, not unscientific, and is quite 
in the line of evolution as the law of life and progress. 
If it lies in the working of God’s law to have a butterfly 
pass through the chrysalis state, it need not confuse us 
to perceive that we are passing through the inferior 
flesh and blood state, into our own perfect state. 

We have in practice advanced beyond the pagan idea 
that the body must be embalmed and wrapped in mummy 
cloths, in order that we may rise into other life as we go 
out of earth life. Let the worms prey, the dust gather, 
the bones fall away. These are not life, but its casing. 

But we still have a clinging remnant of the pagan con¬ 
ception of resurrection. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is that a moral 
necessity seems to be involved in the Resurrection of 
Christ from the dead, as a completion of the Incarna¬ 
tion, and an explanation of the human work and life of 
the Only Son, else inexplicable. 

If He had remained in the grave the memory of Him 
would have lingered in the world as a beautiful charac- 

* Vide chapter on The Resurrection of the Body , p. 495. 


THERE IS HO DEATH—THE RESURRECTIOH. 91 

ter, but the God purpose of a perfect man would have 
been incomplete. God was not revealed as a Father on 
the Cross. 

If He had not risen man’s own life and immortality 
would not have been brought to light. Man must have 
something more than the hope, he must have the power 
of an endless life. He cannot have this perfectly with¬ 
out demonstration. Christ, back from the grave, show¬ 
ing Himself stronger than the world, His hand in the 
neck of death and at His girdle the keys of hell, this 
Man is our knowledge that God is our Father. 

Jesus upon the cross is the agonized cry of man to 
God, “ Cui bono /” Christ in the garden of the Resur¬ 
rection is God’s answer, “ Fear not.” 

The historical evidence of the Resurrection. 

Men rise from a consideration of the spiritual philoso¬ 
phy of the resurrection of Christ, eager not to disprove, 
but to substantiate it. Men are not natural sceptics 
concerning the deep things of God and Immortality. 
But so much is involved that they want to be sure. 
Rhetoric is well enough, but it is not logic. When 
Professor Huxley says, “ Give us the evidence,” he is on 
fair ground. For any fact or doctrine of Christianity 
concerning which historical evidence is procurable, 
rational Christianity is bound to procure and present it. 

If I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead be¬ 
cause my teachers tell me so, that means only that I 
believe in my teachers ; it is not proof of the Resurrec¬ 
tion. Many people are so builded mentally and spirit¬ 
ually that they cannot accept the ipse dixit of Church 
or Churchmen and give themselves no further trouble. 

Men not only want to believe that Christ rose from 


92 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


the dead, hat they reasonably want to know it, as they 
know the facts concerning the Revolution or the Civil 
War. 

The cry so often called sceptical is not sceptical at 
all, hut deeply and truly religious, ‘ ‘ Lord, I believe, 
help Thou mine unbelief. 

When Christian men sneer or coldly look upon a ques¬ 
tioning mind, even concerning matters we believe to be 
fundamental and axiomatic, they are looking askance 
upon God, not man. 

The outward historical evidence of the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ, which corroborates the philosophy of its 
moral and spiritual necessity, should receive our very 
careful attention. 

The credibility of the “ miraculous” is attested by 
scientific as well as Christian scholars. By the miracu¬ 
lous I do not mean in this or any connection, the hap¬ 
pening of things in violation of law, only in variation 
of observed law, or for the first time in human experi¬ 
ence. Mr. Huxley sharply took issue as a scientific man 
with Hume’s argument that a miracle could not happen, 
because it was contrary to human experience.! This is 
a begging of the whole question. On Christmas Day, 
1894, Mr. Hume, if alive, would have said that such a 
miracle as perceiving objects through five inches of pine 
wood could not be, because it was contrary to human 
experience. On Christmas Day, 1895, however, he 
could have done that very thing. 

Mr. Huxley is quite right, then, in saying that the 
miracles of Christianity are not a priori objectionable to 


* Mark 9 : 24. 


t Note 12, p. 230. 


THERE IS NO DEATH—THE RESURRECTION. 93 


the scientific man, only he demands evidence and holds 
that the evidences of Christianity are not strong enough 
to prove the Christian case. Mr. Huxley here leaves 
out of account moral or circumstantial evidence—the 
evidence, for instance, that convinced St. John. He 
will only accept the evidence that Jesus presented to 
Thomas. 

The historical fact which traditional Christianity has 
either forgotten or thinks little of—we are rebuked 
sometimes for urging it—is that Jesus offered exactly 
the proof which the extremest rationalist could de¬ 
mand in His answer to Thomas. 

In considering the historical proofs which Christianity 
offers for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, however, we 
are bound to demand for our witnesses fair treatment, 
which is not always accorded. 

There is a volume on the question of the Testimony 
of the Evangelists (and so named) once well known, but 
now rarely cited, which it seems to me might be profit¬ 
ably recalled to the attention of this thinking genera¬ 
tion. The author, Simon Greenleaf, was also author of 
a book on Evidence, which, I am assured by competent 
legal authorities, is still a classic of the law, and the 
work of one whose opinion on any question involving 
the credibility of evidence would deserve the very high¬ 
est consideration. 

Greenleaf examined the testimony of the four evan¬ 
gelists for the purpose of weighing their worth and im¬ 
portance. He based his examination on the principles 
by which testimony is weighed in legal tribunals, as 
affecting particularly the credibility of witnesses, and 
reached the deliberate conclusion that the evangelists 


94 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


were good witnesses, and that tlieir testimony on the 
whole was unimpeachable. 

These principles were, in brief, that the inquiry 
should be as to possibility of truth, not the probability 
of falseness ; that evidence should be relied upon in the 
absence of proof of circumstances to discredit; that the 
credibility of testimony was determinable by the num¬ 
ber and ability to testify of witnesses, and the conformity 
of their evidence with each other and with experience, 
and coincidence with collateral testimony.* 

The result of such an examination must, according to 
high legal opinion, be at least treated with respect. 

The historical testimony, as contained in the Evan¬ 
gelists and in one of St. Paul’s writings, upon which the 
Christian argument is based, is as follows : 

There are ten instances recorded of Christ’s appear¬ 
ance after He was crucified and buried, all of which 
come under the important head of contemporary testi¬ 
mony. 

1. To Mary Magdalene (Mark 16 : 9 ; John 20 : 11-18). 

2. To certain other women of Galilee (Matt. 28 : 9,10) ; 
cp. Luke 24 : 10. 

3. To two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Mark 
16 : 12 ; Luke 24 : 13). 

4. To Peter (Luke 24 : 34 ; 1 Cor. 15 : 5). 

5. To the apostles and others in the “ upper room” 
(Luke 24 : 36 ; John 20 :19-23) ; all these on the first 
day. 

6. To eleven apostles, Sunday after Resurrection 
(John 20 : 24-29). 

* Testimony of the Evangelists , by Simon Greenleaf, LL.D., 
pp. 1-54. 


THERE IS HO DEATH—THE RESURRECTION. 95 


7. To apostles and others fishing, in the week of the 
Resurrection (John 21 : 1-13). 

8. To five hundred brethren at once ; time not given ; 
noted by St. Paul (1 Cor. 15:6). 

9. To James (1 Cor. 15 : 7). 

10. To eleven apostles and others forty days after the 
Resurrection (Matt. 28 : 16 ; Mark 16 : 14 ; Luke 
24 : 50). 

These are instances recorded of the appearance of 
Jesus in the body. The appearances to St. Stephen, 
St. Paul, and John, in a vision, of course do not fal] 
under the head of such testimony as we are considering, 
and are not therefore added to this list, although many 
scholars whose opinions demand consideration would 
include the appearance to St. Paul as objective and not 
subjective. 

These are the facts with which Greenleaf had to deal, 

Along with his method of investigation may be sub' 
mitted four tests for the substantiation of alleged histori' 
cal facts, set forth by Charles Leslie, a nonguring divine 
of the time of Charles II.—tests which must be accepted 
as covering the whole ground and of sufficient severity 
to satisfy the keenest critics.* 

I. The matter of fact to be proven must be such that 
the outward senses—the eyes and ears—may be judges 
of it. 

The Resurrection of Christ from the dead was such a 
fact, (a) The disciples (not apostles only) saw Christ 

* I am indebted for the forms of these tests and the substance 
of their application to the manuscript notes (since printed) of a 
former beloved instructor, the late Professor Henry A. Yardley, 
of Middletown, Conn. 


96 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


dead, and they saw Him alive again. St. Paul adds to 
the appearances recorded in the Gospels others, as to 
James, and to the five hundred brethren, many of 
whom were alive at the time of his writing. Knowing 
the person of Jesus so well, they could recognize Him, 
and the number of witnesses (besides other important 
considerations) preclude the idea of collusion or of sub¬ 
jective visions. Moreover, from a fact of prime impor¬ 
tance not always accorded the weight it deserves, the 
Resurrection could not have been a case of mistaken 
identity. The disciples and apostles were as much 
astonished as the Jews at the startling event. A close 
perusal of the Gospel story reveals the very significant 
fact that they did not really expect the Resurrection. 
They were affrighted, slow to believe, incredulous. The 
very magnitude of the fact benumbed them. They dis¬ 
believed at first because the joy of belief choked them. 
It was too good to be true. All this is recorded. The 
truth is laid bare. Nothing is hidden. Every argu¬ 
ment against the Resurrection that has been raised since 
in the mind of man, was presented to the minds of the 
disciples in those early days and hours, except the 
charge that they themselves were impostors. But they 
saw Him, and touched Him, and heard Him talk. The 
evidence was such that their outward senses were judges 
of it. They had not one earthly thing to gain by preach¬ 
ing a lie, and every worldly consideration was against 
over-credulity. Yet they were persecuted, tortured, 
slain because they preached what they had seen with 
their eyes, Jesus risen from the dead. 

II. The fact must be accomplished publicly in the 
face of the world. 


THERE IS NO DEATH—THE RESURRECTION. 97 

The crucifixion was accomplished before a great crowd 
of strangers who had assembled in the Holy City from 
all parts of the civilized world to celebrate the Passover. 
The Roman Governor was at once acquainted with the 
fact of His death, and a Roman band of soldiers 
was placed on guard over a sealed tomb in which the 
body lay. In the morning the tomb was open, and the 
body had disappeared. The authorities sought to ex¬ 
plain an inexplicable transaction by bribing the soldiers 
to say that while they slept the body had been taken 
away by His friends.* 

The soldiers had been warned of this. The Resurrec¬ 
tion had been spoken of. The Jews tried to guard 
against such a removal, and the Roman soldiers were 
detailed to prevent it. Does any soldier believe that 
a troop of veterans, relieving guard from time to 
time, slept on post under such circumstances as these ? 
It is the absurdity of a weak cause to propose such 
an alternative. And suppose they did ? Did the man 
who wrote the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel 
conspire with the author of the fifteenth chapter of 
St. Luke’s to steal the body and concoct a lie about the 
Resurrection, in order that they might go everlastingly 
to their own martyrdom ? 

Liars and body snatchers are not the stuff out of 
which are made saints and martyrs. 

The fact, then, was not hidden in a corner, it was 
known immediately to the priests of the Sanhedrim and 
the officers of the Roman garrison. 

III. Public monuments must be kept in memory of 


* St. Matt. 28 : 11-15. 


98 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


the event and some outward action must be performed 
having a relation to it. We note 

(&) The change of the holy day of rest from Saturday, 
the Jewish Sabbath, to Sunday, the third day after the 
Crucifixion, because on that day He rose from the dead. 

Most of the early disciples were Jews, who lingered 
long in the porches of ritual Judaism before embracing 
the larger liberty of Christianity. That they should 
abrogate one of the Ten Commandments, in form, is in¬ 
conceivable, unless there were reasons of transcendent 
importance. Their recognition of Christ as greater than 
Moses, and the far-reaching meaning of His Resurrec¬ 
tion, could receive no greater emphasis than this change 
of day. Surely a dead and discredited prophet would 
not have inspired such action. 

(b) The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper has no raison 
d’&tre save as it is grounded in the Resurrection. In 
that Christ died, “ He died unto sin once, but in that 
He liveth, He liveth unto God.”* 

(c) The Christian Church as an institution, with the 
Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the corner-stone of its 
faith and the theme of its preaching. 

(d) Especially the annual celebration of Easter Day, 
addressing God in thanksgiving, through Jesus Christ 
His risen Son. 

( e ) The Liturgies of Christendom. 

IV. Such monuments or such actions and observances 
must be instituted and commenced from the time that 
the matter of fact was done. 

From one week after the Resurrection Sunday (known 


* Rom. 6 :10. 


THERE IS HO DEATH—THE RESURRECTION. 99 


then as the “ first day” of the week to distinguish it 
from the Jew’s “ seventh day”), we have instances of 
almost all of these monuments, down to the end of the 
recorded scriptural history ; and when the writings of 
the earliest fathers appear, we find ourselves in the same 
environment of Sunday, breaking of bread and of prayers, 
and the Church (its members first being called Chris¬ 
tians at Antioch). 

Such is the application of Leslie’s test-rules. The 
evidence depends upon the credibility of the witnesses. 
If such evidence does not put the Resurrection well 
within the realm of accredited historical facts, there is 
no certainty of the truth of any event in remote an¬ 
tiquity—the fall of Jerusalem, for instance. 

This testimony satisfies many. But it is not the pur¬ 
pose of these pages to push the doubting or agnostic 
mind into accepting unpleasant alternatives. My effort 
is to demonstrate the rationalism of Christianity. That 
it is inherently possible, that it lays down no funda¬ 
mental propositions which the man of science or the 
historical critic need fear to freely investigate, and whose 
conclusions he may not, as a reasonable being, be open to 
accept. 

The Incarnation and the Resurrection are the great 
spiritual truths of Christianity. That they are both 
rational and historical is, to my mind, a primary con¬ 
dition for belief in them as spiritual entities. 

We believe, therefore, that Jesus Christ rose from the 
dead. 

First, as the rational and philosophical sequel of the 
Creation and Incarnation. 

Second, as a well-authenticated fact of human history. 


100 


THE FACTS AH1> THE FAITH. 


But the Resurrection as a factor in the evolution of 
man, the child of God, is rooted in a fact which ration¬ 
alism must accept, which science cannot deny, in which 
faith exults, and upon which Christianity rests in assur¬ 
ance. 

As in discussing the Incarnation, the appeal was taken 
away from the historical evidence and philosophy of the 
event to the supreme fact of Christ’s divine influence 
through all these centuries, so now we are bound to 
consider that this influence rests upon the belief in a 
risen Christ, not in a dead Jesus. 

In the strength and inspiration of the Resurrection, 
not through the shame and humiliation of the cruci¬ 
fixion, the world of mankind has arisen. 

Christ not in figure, but in fact, has dragged man 
from the tomb, and shown him that the grave is a gate¬ 
way, not a cul de sac. 

Philosophy could only guess, not reach this truth. 
Science can point toward it, but the religion of Jesus 
Christ to-day appeals in its last analysis, not to what 
man has seen or heard or demonstrated, but to what 
man is, as a child of God, whose destiny is fulfilled only 
in God. 

Man’s upward reach and ascent through nineteen cen¬ 
turies dates spiritually as temporally from the rifled 
grave and rich man’s sepulchre. If Christ died upon 
the cross, and did not transmute that cross into triumph 
somehow, then a lie has been the noblest spur of the 
noblest life of man. 

The strongest demonstration of the Resurrection of 
Christ is the moral effect that belief in it has had upon 
mankind. 


THERE IS HO DEATH—-THE RESURRECTION. 101 


For always there is struggle, and ever before us is the 
cross. We are stained by sins and crushed by suffering, 
sorrow, and death. But through it all throbs life with 
a purpose—the life not of a beast, but of a Son. This 
life may take on masks and deformities, still it is 
God’s life, not man’s, isolate from God. It cannot die, 
and as it has gathered personality in order to express 
itself, personality cannot die. 

What the spiritual body is in substance or fashion I 
do not know, and only remotely care. Through it and 
by means of it Christ taught me and all mankind that 
the ultimate of a man is to be a child of God, knowing 
the Father and inheriting the kingdom of Heaven. 

Christ’s Resurrection on the third day was a prophecy 
of the resurrection of humanity. The history of human¬ 
ity since the memory of that third day has been a fulfil¬ 
ment. A belief in the Resurrection is “ a supreme act 
of faith in the reasonableness of God’s works.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE DESTINY OF MAN—THE ASCENSION. 

“ He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of 
God, the Father Almighty.” Apostles’ Creed. 

“ I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world ; 
again 1 leave the world and go to the Father.” 

St. John 16 : 28. 

“ To be seated at the right hand of immanent Deity is to be in 
the thick of the Conflict which humanity is waging with sin and 
evil ; it is to be forever here in our midst, the inspiration of all 
strength and courage, the source of hope and faith, the pledge 
of ultimate victory.” 

Professor Alex. V. G. Allen. 

“ Thou, O Lord, hast created us for Thyself, and our hearts 
are restless until they rest in Thee.” St. Augustine. 

That Christ rose again from the dead and returned 
for a time to His earthly associations is not the whole 
doctrine of the Resurrection. If He remains on earth 
after having conquered and subdued it, if there is noth¬ 
ing beyond, it seems to be a case of arrested develop¬ 
ment. Man has never rested in the speculation that 
the dominion of the earth is his final destiny. The idea 
of Sonship is carried forward even from the open tomb. 
It could not be that man, having risen superior to all 
earthly foes, should return to wage such a strife over 


THE DESTINY OF MAN—THE ASCENSION. 103 


again, to deal again in the spiritual body with the petty 
material things of a material environment. 

The story of Sisyphus is not a parable of Christ. The 
earthly triumph had been achieved. The Man halting 
for a moment on the field of victory looks forward and 
upward still. 

The Ascension of Christ, as set forth in this article of 
the Creed, is not an isolate event. It is articulated 
with what precedes and follows. The words “ and sit- 
teth on the right hand of God, the Father Almighty,” 
convey an impression of finality, as though some work 
had been wrought, which was in itself the rationale of 
what had preceded. 

The Ascension is, in detail, a completion of the Resur¬ 
rection ; in general, it is the last link in the evolution 
of man from God to God’s ideal. Christ in the Incar¬ 
nation was not separate from man, but the Head and 
representative of the human family. All humanity was 
epitomized in the Incarnation. In His Ascension we 
perceive not only His achievement, but because He is 
our Head, man’s destiny. 

The Risen Christ, yet on earth, was short of His own 
purpose. 

Step by step, we have traced the spiritual development 
of this One who epitomized the race. We perceive Him 
now taking in natural order His seat on the right hand 
of God, completing His revelations both of the develop¬ 
ment and destiny of man. 

He first took flesh and then led the Flesh into a reve¬ 
lation of God’s will, plan, and purpose. 

The historical proof of the Ascension is bound up 
with that of the Resurrection, for it is a part of the 


104 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


same act, as we will presently be called upon to con¬ 
sider. 

But while the historical accuracy of the Ascension lies 
in exactly the same plane as that of the Resurrection, 
we approach the former from a different point of view. 
Our belief in the Ascension is a necessity from belief in 
the Resurrection. The record (far less perfect than 
that set forth in the last chapter) merely substantiates 
what we feel must have been true to give full meaning 
to the rising from the dead. Such evidence as we have 
would be taken in court concerning any fact not super¬ 
natural, but we must admit that the evidence for the 
details of the Ascension is not by any means strong. 
The New Testament writers infer the Ascension rather 
than give data concerning it. It is related in Mark 
16 : 19 (which may be an interpolated passage), Luke 
24 : 51, and Acts 1 : 9. These two latter statements 
are probably by the same author, and therefore entitled 
only to the weight of one witness. 

A comparison of the sixty-eighth Psalm with Eph. 
4 : 8 and the argument to the Hebrews, show that the 
first Christian disciples accepted the fact without enter¬ 
ing into the details. Our Lord’s words in John 6 : 62 
and 20 : 17 are significant also. 

But while we must confess the historical evidence for 
the mode of the Ascension is far from strong, as con¬ 
cerning a supernatural event, we believe that the fact of 
the Ascension is both natural and rational in the career 
of such an One as Jesus of Nazareth. 

1. If we believe in the Resurrection, we are now deal¬ 
ing with a unique being. Granting the fact of a spir¬ 
itual existence, not subject to the observed laws of 


THE DESTINY OF MAN—THE ASCENSION. 105 


nature, but superior to them by virtue of the higher 
law of a higher bei ng, the Ascension of Christ is not 
supernatural in the sense of being 'contrary to law, but 
natural in the sense of conforming to a law which trans¬ 
cends the observation of flesh and blood. 

The testimony of His appearances (it must be noted 
that He did not dwell among men, but from time to 
time appeared to them) is that of a man the same in 
appearance, but different in essence. He seemed to live 
in a world which, while it enfolded His disciples, was 
not to be apprehended by men clothed with mortality. 

2. Is such a world conceivable ? What has science to 
say of the proposition that there is a natural world in 
which we live and play our earthly parts, and a spiritual 
world coterminous with it ? 

Rational Christianity owes here a large debt to sci¬ 
ence. It is due to the seers and priests of the material 
universe that we rise from our spiritual intuition to 
what amounts to a physical demonstration (as through 
a glass darkly) of an unseen world, in which we may 
believe without superstition and without fear.* But 
aside from scientific demonstration we observe certain 
indications of the existence of two worlds interpenetrat¬ 
ing each other. 

( a ) In the physical world some men can apprehend 
sights and sounds which are not apprehended by 
others. The Indian hunter, developed by heredity and 
training, lives in a far larger material world as he treads 
his native forests than the white man who is brought up 
in a city and accustomed to paved streets. The deaf 


Note 13, p. 231. 


106 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


and blind man can naturally conceive nothing of a world 
ringing with music and ablaze with color. 

(b) In the mental world the same holds true. What 
is mere sound to one is the breath of inspiration to an¬ 
other. A peasant sees “ black marks defacing white 
paper,” while a student reads Hamlet or St. Paul’s 
Epistles. One man sees daubs of color where another 
dwells on the serene beauty of the Sistine Madonna. 
One’s ear is tortured by sound and fury, another is rav¬ 
ished by the strains of Wagner. 

And we note that the physical and mental worlds, 
which are not apprehended by perhaps a large majority 
of mankind, exist, whether apprehended or not. So 
that in outward nature and in the mind we are all walk¬ 
ing through a world, the meaning of which and the 
reality of which doth not yet appear, because of a re¬ 
tarded or limited mental or physical development. 

(c) It is fair and rational to argue by analogy from 
the mental and physical to the spiritual. 

Emancipated from the limitations of the flesh, and 
clothed upon by the spiritual body, Jesus sees, is a part 
of, and has His abode in the spiritual world which is 
here all about us, but not yet apprehended by the gross 
senses of those who bide in the natural body. 

We sometimes see in the case of people drawing near 
death evidence of their perceptions of things we cannot 
perceive. What is called telepathy has come under my 
own observation in such a conclusive way as to indicate 
the nearness of that “ other world” of psychic specu¬ 
lation. 

I do not mean to put such apparently trivial illustra¬ 
tions as proof. But no one can fail to realize that there 


THE DESTINY OF MAN—THE ASCENSION. 107 


are hints and partial evidences of another world envel¬ 
oping and somehow interwoven with this world, which 
seem to be the bursting forth of a spiritual existence 
into this natural or material existence. 

The vulgar use made of this great mystery by which 
we are encompassed, does not destroy the fact of its 
rationalism. To pierce the mystery is beyond the power 
of the mortal until it shall have been clothed upon. 
Every attempt is simply an effort to break in upon 
the working of a purpose which has for its ultimate that 
we shall know God and see Him, when, and not until, 
all things shall be subdued unto Him, even the Son. 

The reality of this other world is, at least, a scientific 
possibility. The proof of such a statement is writ large 
over the records of modern science. If the luminiferous 
ether, which has been declared to be as absolutely hard 
as adamant and flexible as steel, permeates all matter,* 
there is no rational objection to the conclusion that two 
worlds may occupy the same space at the same time. 

“ Science does nothing,’’ says Dr. Jevons, “ to reduce 
the number of strange things that we may believe. 
When fairly pursued, it makes large drafts upon one’s 
powers of comprehension and belief.” 

The physical world and the spiritual world may be 
coterminous. It is the teaching of Scripture that they 
are. When Christ, who was about to “ ascend,” said, 
“ Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the 
world,” He declared that although “ ascended” He 
would still be in the midst. 

“ We cannot, indeed, unite the two sides of (this truth) 


* Note 13, p. 231. 


108 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


in one conception, but we can hold both firmly without 
allowing the one truth to infringe upon the other.”* 

The conclusion we draw from this interpenetration of 
the natural and the spiritual worlds is that the Ascen¬ 
sion is not a departure of Christ from the physical world 
to some far-off spiritual retreat, but His “withdrawal 
into” the refined spiritual atmosphere which enshrouds 
us. The “ right hand of God” is a figurative expres¬ 
sion for power and glory, not a local definition in space 
and time.f Heaven, God’s dwelling-place, is not far 
off. The kingdom of God is within us. 

3. The rationalism of this withdrawal into the spirit¬ 
ual world, where He has the wider horizon and clearer 
view, is further seen in the un-natural position He 
would have occupied had He remained on earth. There 
was nothing further for the natural man to accomplish. 
His destiny could not be to haunt, ghostlike, the former 
familiar scenes. He must arrive somewhere. The per¬ 
fection of the physical man lies in living in, in using 
properly, and finally dominating the physical world. 
But this achievement evolves a new being out of the old 
one. The spiritual man must obey still the law of his . 
being, which is set forth in scientific phrase as “ corre¬ 
spondence with environment.” 

This is the only true perfection. All else is either a 
struggle toward it or a falling away from it. 

4. Unless this unique life has withdrawn into other 
Life, where it exists perfectly in conformity with its 
surroundings, what becomes of it ? 

There is no such thing as spent force ; there is only 

* Westcott, Historic Faith , p. 81. 
f Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought , p. 386. 


THE DESTINY OF MAH—THE ASCEMSIOM. 109 


otherwise directed force. The heavy hammer beating 
in a spike does not dissipate force, but transmutes it. 
There is a seeming enormous daily loss in the radiant 
heat of the sun, the earth receiving but a two-billionth 
part of it, according to Professor Tyndall, but science 
will not admit the possibility of such a thing. There 
is no loss of force here, but its transmission, its with¬ 
drawal into other spheres.* 

Life is force after its kind, the most persistent force. 
The life indwelling in flesh may exhaust and rend the 
flesh, but it cannot spend its force. It must take some 
other form than that of the flesh body. There is a nat¬ 
ural body in which life works, there must be something 
which life works through after the natural body is used 
up ; the spiritual body corresponds to the natural neces¬ 
sity, although no vaguest definition of the spiritual body 
can be attempted. 

I by no means say this is a demonstration of the Ascen¬ 
sion of Christ, and after Him of mankind, in and through 
Him. It only seems to me that here as elsewhere Chris¬ 
tianity has learned of science, and buttressed the old 
faith once delivered to the saints by the new facts which 
are day after day uncovered to our understanding. 

We have reached now a point where we may examine 
the religious teaching of the Ascension— i.e., its connec¬ 
tion with the past, present, and ultimate relation of God 
and man. 

1. In Christ’s human personality (of which He may 
never divest Himself) we see that the Ascension is the 
resumption of His proper place, His whole place in the 


Note 14, p. 232. 


110 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


universe, His restoration to the free companionship 
with the Father. “ I came forth from the Father, and 
am come into the world : again, I leave the world, and 
go to the father.’’* 

2. But in that achievement of His destiny He is not 
alone ; He bears humanity with Him, not leading it as 
a thing apart from Himself, but as the Head of the 
body. 

This is the religious significance of the Ascension as 
toward man. This is the destiny of man, to get back 
to God. When man was created in the divine image, 
and sent forth under conditions of time and space, there 
was that in the initial velocity of his creation to bring 
him back to God. Sent out and vitalized with the life 
of God, this creature is an abortion unless he finds his 
ultimate perfection with God. The soul proceeds from 
the eternal moral source, and its movement is not in a 
circle, as perfection would involve, but in a long and 
irregular ellipse, halting often, but restless and unfin¬ 
ished and dimly conscious of its imperfections, until it 
rests one day in God. This is the ascension of man and 
the session at the right hand of God. 

We speak of man’s restlessness, the divine unrest, of 
the poet’s phrase which sets our thoughts on something 
higher. This is an important factor in considering the 
religious progress of the race. It lies back of all Jewish 
aspiration, as seen in prophet, poet, singer, warrior; 
back of that Pagan yearning which St. Paul caught from 
the altar to the Unknown God as a text to preach Christ. 
It has thrilled the cry of the human in all ages, and has 


* St. John 16 : 28. 


THE DESTINY OF MAN—THE ASCENSION. Ill 


fashioned the work of the human in all time. It is the 
spur of those gropings of science which mark modern 
progress, that constant reaching out for conclusions, and 
exalting hypothesis into statements of fact, because men 
shrink from halting half-way. It tinges the color of 
the painter, and runs in minor key through all litera¬ 
ture. 

Man longs as a result of his divine endowment, to get 
to his own place, to express all that is in him. When 
Christ said, therefore, “ I came forth from the Father, 
and again I go to the Father,” He expressed the desire 
of humanity since Adam, and gave a clear articulation 
to the mumbling and chattering and half futile efforts 
to do and to be, what men felt vaguely they ought to do 
and to be. 

The Ascension, then, is more than an object-lesson. 
It is human destiny worked out. Because He is in us 
and we in Him, we are carried up to His God and our 
God, and in the Ascension the restless soul folds its tired 
wings and finds haven in the bosom of God. 

As toward God there is another side to the Ascension. 
The Prince goes to Him as a conqueror by virtue of His 
commission and His conquest. 

The High Priest of humanity (using human language) 
goes back bringing an offering, Himself—a perfect offer¬ 
ing which entitles Him to entrance within the Holy of 
Holies of the universe, which is the Presence of God. 

But this offering of Himself is also the comprehensive 
offering of Humanity. With Him, entering the Pres¬ 
ence, is every tiny babe lying on the mother’s breast, 
every tired woman beating her bosom against the bars 
of circumstance or sin, every sorrowful man groping in 


112 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


the dark caves of ignorance. He needs no words to 
plead the cause of that Humanity of which He is the 
Head. The Father requires no other sacrifice of the 
Only Son than that He is the firstfruits of the harvest 
sown in Eden. 

His person with the marks of earth upon Him is His 
mediation. He stands Sponsor for His own. 

This it is to be at the right hand of God in power and 
glory. To be as God’s perfect manifestation in His own 
place. And this place is not withdrawal from man, but 
to he “ in the thick of the conflict.” 

The Ascension therefore is a glimpse into the mind of 
God. Why we are here at all is a problem that has 
puzzled and troubled many generations of thoughtful 
souls. Why there ever was an earth, a universe, peopled 
with beings who sin and sorrow. It makes the brain 
reel, this thought which comes to most of us at one 
time or another. Why are we here at all ? The mid¬ 
day silence of a deep forest is oppressive because of its 
utter quiet. We move about in it to assure ourselves 
of being. We welcome a bird-note that recalls us to 
the fact of life. Yet all about us is a world unseen, 
unfelt, which palpitates with the fresh life of God ; we 
are encompassed with billows of that Infinite Eternal 
Energy from which all things proceed. 

So with the silence of the soul. The question, Why ? 
oppresses us, beats us down. There is no answer. The 
hush sickens us. It is the way to insanity. Man in this 
world without some glimpse of the reason of it, some voice 
out of the silence, is in the way of becoming a wild beast. 

Here in the Ascension of Christ we have a fleeting 
glimpse perhaps of the why ! 


THE DESTINY OF MAN—THE ASCENSION. 113 


It is that God needs man to complete His own Being. 
It may sound audacious, but it is Christ’s supreme reve¬ 
lation of God that He is a Father-God. He is not an 
eternal monk, an inert intelligence, but a Father who 
craves family love, family relations, family life. He 
completes Himself in the continuous outflowing of His 
life into creatures who will, after learning many lessons, 
discover their destiny to be at one with Him, at peace 
with Him—He dwelling in them and they in Him. 

Back of the first chapters of Genesis we see the ever¬ 
lasting arms outstretched, and the voice that breathed 
o’er Eden declaring, “ I will have Mine own to be 
Mine,” and so in His own image made He man. 

The practical application of the Ascension teaching 
lies in the fact that Christ withdrew into the presence 
of God because He was fit for that presence. 

We are still backward, wilful, ignorant; but we are 
still children of God, members of Christ, and heirs of 
the kingdom of Heaven. There is light upon all human 
paths if men will look for it; knowledge in all human 
experience if men will seek for it, and a love ineffable to 
draw us out of our selfishness into our selfhood. 

Our failures lie in but half, or not at all, appreciating 
our place in the universe. 

The Ascension of Christ is a correction to this Sad- 
ducean self-doubt. 

The cry of man to God through the ages, for an an¬ 
swer to the stupendous and awful problem of himself in 
the world, yet stirred by a divine life that finds no ulti¬ 
mate in the world, finds its antiphon in the joyous hal¬ 
lelujah of the angelic host opening the golden gates that 
the King of glory may go in. 


114 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


He cries aloud, Lift up your heads, oh ye gates ! He 
who took man’s flesh, fought man’s battles, won man’s 
victories over all that stood or might stand between man 
and his appointed place, this One is not man, not God, 
but man-God, and lie is the Head of the Body ; we 
who stumble on are members of it, but membership in 
that body is oneness with God, which is our heritage. 

And so believing, we repeat with great joy that He 
ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of 
God, the Father Almighty, and we look upon the grave 
as but a gateway to broader fields of self-realization and 
achievement, and upon death as the kiss of God upon 
our eyelids, wakening us from the dull slumber of the 
fleshly, to the jocund dawn of the eternal life. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 

“ He cometh again to judge the quick and the dead.” 

Apostles' Greed. 

“ So then every one of us shall give account of himself to 
God.” Rom. 14:12. 

“ But the divine law is not external, superimposed, added to 
nature and to us ; it is around us and within us. embracing us 
and penetrating us ; it is the same everywhere and at all times. 
In human law punishment is also external and superimposed ; it 
is not necessary, and may often be avoided. The divine law, on 
the contrary, is not only universal, but under it and in it and by 
it we live and move and have our being. To avoid it, therefore, 
is impossible ; to violate it is to bring punishment on the offend¬ 
er by the operation of the law itself.” 

Joseph Le Conte. 

Even as He hears the welcome chant of the adoring 
angels ; as there breaks upon His face the light of eter¬ 
nity, as He enters the Presence and sits at the right 
hand of God, Christ’s deathless association with the 
human, which is ever to be a part of His eternal Per¬ 
sonality, stirs within the divine self-consciousness. 

He is perfected. He has achieved. The firstfruits 
are laid upon the altar. In Him potentially all men 
have ascended, and both the harvest and aftermath will 
surely be gathered and stored. 


116 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


But He, the Only Son, is destined once again to deal 
with man. He cometh to judge the quick and the 
dead. 

In the last chapter there was an intimation that the 
destiny of man is accomplished not for man, like the 
working of a charm, but with man. Man is redeemed. 
He must work out the general truth in every particular 
instance. The cross is not an amulet. The eternal 
sacrifice is not vicarious substitution. Each man has 
his own place, which no one else can fill, his own work, 
which no one else can do. 

Christ’s commission was not to do all things for men, 
but to do all things with men. We, backward and wil¬ 
ful and ignorant as we are, have our share in the accom¬ 
plishment of that purpose whereof the outward and visi¬ 
ble sign is that we are stamped with the image of God. 

The Ascension declares God’s ideal and ultimate for 
man, but we have only to look about us every day to 
see how rudely the ideal is shattered, and how far off 
from that ultimate we are in daily life. 

Is this all ? 

We must believe one of two things. Either God will 
have no more to do with men, wearied and disgusted 
with our obstinacy and wilfulness, or these fleshly vari¬ 
ations of the divine purpose are taken into account, and 
God will not suffer us to drop from His eternal purpose. 

This is our belief. God is not such an one as our¬ 
selves, that He grows impatient and withdraws Himself 
from contact with His own. 

The Incarnation was not to try what men might do 
with an incentive, it was a drawing up of humanity into 
the Godhead, it was the establishment of a permanent 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 117 

relation. That men do not at once perceive this rela¬ 
tion is quite natural when we consider the blindness of 
human sight and dulness of human hearing as to divine 
things. 

God in man has done all in one way that God in man 
can do. There is still another revelation of the divine 
to the human in order to show the final relation between 
God and the human sons of God. 

The final contrast between Right and "Wrong, Truth 
and Falsehood, Good and Evil must be manifested. 
This must be to the end, not that the goodness of God 
and the wilfulness of men may be eternally separated, 
but eternally brought together, the wrong yielding to 
the right, the false to the true, the evil to the good. 

The judgment of living and dead is the God-Father’s 
last effort (in time) to show Himself as He is, to His 
Family. 

This judgment is a fearful thing—a weighing, sift¬ 
ing, balancing, considering of the good and evil, under 
conditions and limitations of humanity—and therefore 
there is divine mercy and justice in committing it to the 
hands of Jesus Christ, the man. 

The judgment of man’s achievement along the line of 
his eternal destiny is given over to Him who, having 
manifested and realized that destiny, is competent to 
the further task of weighing man’s fitness for it. 

The Creed statement is simple. “ He cometh again 
to judge the quick and the dead.” 

A search of the records makes it clear that the doc¬ 
trine of a judgment was a fundamental belief of those 
who lived in and close to the times of Jesus of Nazareth. 
It was so real and living a truth that many of the early 


118 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


disciples believed He was to come in their day, a belief 
which St. Paul shared. It was a cause for rebuke to the 
Thessalonian converts that they should neglect obvious 
natural duties in preparation for the daily expected 
advent. 

This belief in a speedy reappearance of Christ seems 
to have been the result of that vital connection of Christ 
with earth and humanity, which was felt to be a result 
of the Incarnation. Christ must come in answer to the 
desire of the human for Him, which was as real as the 
craving for food and drink to the hungry and thirsty. 
Having fed upon the divine food, man was thereafter 
unsatisfied without it. His own words, moreover, 
pointed to a speedy return. 

Now the early Christians were, perhaps, nearer right 
than we have been accustomed to think. If the coming 
of Christ to judge was only one final coming they were 
wrong. But if His comings were many and not one 
they were right. 

The Scriptures teach of many comings of God like 
unto this final coming of the Son of man to judge the 
quick and the dead. 

The second advent, popularly so called, of Christ does 
not stand alone as a peculiar act of God in His dealings 
with His world. God has always been coming according 
to the Scriptures, sacred and profane, and coming in 
judgment. 

The cities of the plain, the visitations in the desert, 
the division of the tribes into two kingdoms, the national 
dispersion of the Jews, the fall of Jerusalem—all of 
these were judgment-comings of God. One of our most 
devout and entirely orthodox theological writers declares 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 119 


his belief that Christ did come according to promise in 
the last days of John the Beloved. “ Christ came most 
truly in the lifetime of St. John. He founded His im¬ 
movable Kingdom. He gathered before Him, seated 
upon the throne of His glory , the nations of the earth 
old and new, and passed sentence upon them. He 
judged in that shaking of earth and heaven most truly 
and most decisively the living and the dead. He estab¬ 
lished fresh foundations for society and a fresh standard 
of individual worth.”* 

I take these words to be a great enlargement of the 
idea of the judgment as held by traditional theology. 
The judgment means, not just once again will Christ 
come for judgment and separation (although an idea of 
finality is contained here), but, in harmony with the 
idea of Cod in Christ reconciling. His comings have 
been and will be many. 

We must get rid of the popular notion that Christ has 
withdrawn Himself from human affairs ; that He dwells 
in awful grandeur pleading with a still wrathful Father ; 
that at some far-off day He will drop from the heavens 
upon us, and that this coming will be final; that mean¬ 
while we may get along as we will, since He has done all 
He could for us ; that some of us know it and some do 
not; that those who know it will be glad at His coming, 
because He will take them to His Father; that those 
who do not know it will be crushed and overwhelmed at 
His advent, and will depart into hell for their ignorance, 
wilfulness, and sin. 

This was the popular idea of the Judgment. It was 


Westcott, The Historic Faith , p. 90. 


120 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


palliated by pictures of the awful nature of man’s sin, 
so that logically there was no escape in the theological 
system for the man who sinned up to the hour of the 
coming. Men and women sighed and sobbed and an¬ 
guished over it, but did not attempt to deny it, except 
a few who were promptly consigned beforehand to the 
slough they denied, out of regard for the awful goodness 
of the Heavenly Father. 

But this is not a rational or logical conception of judg¬ 
ment. History tells a different story. Christ taught 
another thing altogether. 

We revert to our theory of the Ascension outlined in 
the last chapter. Christ has not withdrawn from the 
world, but “ withdrawn into the spiritual sphere,” and 
the miracle, if we need call it so, of His perpetual pres¬ 
ence relieves us of the horror that a Cliristless world 
implies. From this spiritual environment He breaks 
forth in judgment from time to time. More than once 
He has historically come to judge, with the power and 
glory of perfection, sifting and weighing and striking 
the balance in nations, in churches, ay, in individuals, 
and setting the world forward, cleaned from its filthy 
rags of sensual and earthly accretion, into clearer light 
and wider knowledge. 

For in judgment Christ is the Uplifter as well as the 
One who weighs and discriminates. He sifts the wheat 
from the chaff, and the result is a larger harvest, not a 
lesser one. Judgment does not crush, but lifts to a 
higher plane. 

When He came to His temple of old He set a higher 
standard of worship, and while He swept out the dross 
and the mammonmongers. He redeemed the Father’s 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 121 


House from being a thieves’ den to its proper use. He 
did not destroy it. 

The destruction of Jerusalem, what a coming in judg¬ 
ment was this ! It was the ultimate of the nation that 
was joined to its idols. It was the last day of temporal 
Judaism, but it was the renaissance of spiritual Juda¬ 
ism. We need not scorn the Chosen People. Their 
times are not yet fulfilled. Their final judgment as a 
church-nation was their uplifting, both through and 
apart from Christianity to a higher spiritual plane. The 
veil of the temple was rent, not to show no God, but to 
reveal God as one who dwelt not on Mount Gerizim, 
nor in Jerusalem, but in His whole world reconciling it 
and man to Himself. 

Christ, the judge of nations, came even in the sword 
of Mohammed, stamping down the rotten empire of the 
East, grown so corrupt that it was contaminating the 
nations of the earth. He came in the smiting incursions 
of the northern hosts which broke in upon, overrode, 
and lifted up the Roman Empire. He came in the 
Reformation of the sixteenth century, not in the vulgar 
Protestant conception of unseating the whore of Babylon 
from her unclean nest on the seven hills, but in breath¬ 
ing a fresh breath of life into the Body of Christ, and 
vitalizing anew the currents of spiritual development and 
progress, grown sluggish because of the choked-up out¬ 
lets. Rome herself was lifted up by the Reformation. 
Her faith is purer and the manifestations of God’s life 
in her corporate existence more real. 

Judgment, therefore, is one, but judgments are many. 
But what of finality of judgment ? We speak of a last 
judgment, and the impression is fixed in our minds of a 


122 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


great court-room with Christ upon the bench and the 
Recording Angel in the prosecutor’s seat. To the de¬ 
cisions of such a tribunal we attach the idea of finality. 
After the sentence there is no recall, from it there is no 
appeal. 

But Christ taught no such doctrine. The New Testa¬ 
ment speaks of a Great Day, but not of a final judgment 
save as respects this dispensation. I argue from the 
analogy of the Great Day, the great and dreadful day of 
the Old Testament prophecies. The same adjectives of 
awe and finality are applied to that day as to the Day 
spoken of by Christ in His parables of judgment. 

But they are not the same day. The New Testament 
expressly teaches that they are not. Before that great 
and dreadful day it was promised that Elijah should 
come, which Christ interpreted of John the Baptist. 
Concerning the events of that Day our Lord expressly 
said that that generation should not pass until all were 
fulfilled. That “last” Day, prophesied long before, 
was notably and plainly fulfilled in the Destruction of 
Jerusalem. 

For what happened then ? 

The Chosen People came to the end of a dispensation. 
In the crashing ruin of that end the Chosen People were 
judged. In figurative language the old earth and the 
old heaven passed away, and all things became new. 
Spiritual Judaism entered upon a larger, more expansive 
life in Christianity. The Last Day of the Old was the 
Birth-hour of the New Dispensation. 

With these warnings on His lips Christ points forward 
still. The New Dispensation (men grew later to call it 
properly the dispensation of the Spirit) will in turn 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 123 


grow old, and in its turn will be judged. Christianity 
will be judged as Judaism was. The result, unless God’s 
law is no law, but chance or whim, will be what the 
result was of old. Humanity will be weighed in that 
final judgment of this dispensation, purged, sifted, and 
lifted to a higher plane. Finality has to do with time 
and with mortals, not with eternity and immortals. 
But that there will be a judgment of all men, an indi¬ 
vidual judgment. One Day, however many others there 
may be in the mean time, we believe ; and it is sufficient 
for our thought and quite enough for our spiritual and 
mental balance to consider the final judgment of this 
dispensation, which is the one in which our lot is cast. 
We will inquire, therefore, into its nature and scope, 
and examine the foundations of its doctrine in the light 
of rational Christianity. 

Is it rational for men to expect that One Day (in 
human language) when a man’s work in this world is 
over, and complete so far as his flesh and blood can deal 
with it, it will be sifted, weighed, scanned, scrutinized 
by God ? Is it further a rational conception, that as a 
man achieved here, so will he enter the now unseen 
world, conditioned by his earthly progress or no-progress 
in the knowledge of God ? 

The testimony of the Scriptures and of science are at 
one as to what is called the “ end of the world.” “But 
the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; 
in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great 
noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, 
the earth also and the works that are therein shall be 
burned up.”* 


* 2 Pet. 3 :10. 


124 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


This “end,” so graphically and accurately predicted 
by the New Testament writers long before the probings 
of physical science had written down the same inter¬ 
pretations of God’s purpose, involves two things. 

1. The destruction of the conditions under which 
human life at present exists and manifests itself, and 
hence the end of this dispensation. 

2. The persistence of human life in some other form. 
For as we have already had cause to claim, there is no 
such thing as spent life. The force of life must be 
somehow manifested in the universe. 

Life persists, but again we must bear in mind that the 
life we are considering is human life, which means moral 
personality. It persists as personality. We can get rid 
of most other things, but we cannot get rid of ourselves. 
It is ourself that lifts itself above the chaos of jarring 
and crashing material atoms. It is ourself according to 
our earthly moulding. Ourself in the spiritual as we 
have been in the physical world. 

This self may have been developing Godward or devil- 
ward. We see this dual persistence every day, not only 
in two persons, but frequently in the one person. 

Man instinctively looks forward to this crash and sepa¬ 
ration of things spiritual and physical, that he may 
stand out in the open, so to speak. Godward or devil- 
ward, good or bad, all men are anxiously expecting a 
summing up of some sort, not only because they are 
taught it in Scripture or in science, but because it is a 
demand of their nature. Judgment upon what a man 
has achieved along the line of his destiny is not an arbi¬ 
trary thing which he has to learn, it lies, like eternity, in 
every man’s soul. He longs for it. 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 125 


The man who is consciously honest in his intentions, 
upright so far as strength is given him in his actions, 
faces this judgment calmly and gravely, demanding it 
for his justification. He may have been weak and mis¬ 
taken, or he may have been misunderstood, misrepre¬ 
sented, better or worse than he seemed to be. He de¬ 
mands as a necessity of his being that he be set right. 

The man who is dishonest, time-serving, tricky, evil, 
in his bosom also lurks a desire for judgment. He seeks 
it as a relief. It is the instinct that brings a man to a 
court-room voluntarily after years of concealed guilt. 
He must have it out, strike the balance, and try again. 

This seems to me to be the actual working of sin in 
the last analysis of the human problem. I do not mini¬ 
mize or seek to neutralize it in the least. The hateful¬ 
ness of sin, the awful wickedness of running counter to 
the law of truth, the defiance of eternal life that lies at 
our hand, the marring and staining of the image of God 
in us, the waste of God’s life in us, nothing can be 
more horrible, nothing more true of the facts of life. 

But because of this, and because we are both by nature 
and grace the children of God and heirs of eternal life, 
I believe that sin cannot finally abide in the soul of one 
man or any where in God’s universe. I cannot relieve 
the situation by confining it to one corner of the uni¬ 
verse even, and think complacently that one part of the 
Family of God can be unaffected by the fact that the 
larger part are chained in blackness of darkness and 
agony forever. That is only an exaggeration of human 
ideas of punishment. We have our jails and prisons for 
those whom we cannot reform. God can have no jail 
for the perpetual imprisonment of the obstinate. Death 


126 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


is at least rational. Endless imprisonment is irra¬ 
tional. 

The nature of sin is such that the sinner must finally 
acknowledge the awful misery and horror of it. He 
himself will not be satisfied in the presence of G-od if he 
could stand there, which in the judgment he does for a 
moment, until he purges himself. 

Because sin is an utterly unheavenly thing, a thing 
apart from the ideal and purpose of God in His universe, 
the consciousness of it will one day bring the sinner 
back in humility and penitence to the law of humanity. 
The judgment is the prime agent in this bringing back. 

Leaving mankind for a moment, we must see also that 
a judgment is necessary for God’s justification of Him¬ 
self. Unless there be, some time and somewhere, a Re¬ 
adjustment according to the infinite truth of things ; 
unless through all this mass of unreason, unwisdom, 
oppression, there is a principle of final equalization in 
terms whereby man shall see God in it all working 
toward perfection, then we are brought to despair and 
moral confusion. 

If God be not stronger (not whimsically or arbitrarily 
so, but in the working of His laws) than man’s dealing 
with the earth would indicate, then He is indeed such 
an one as ourselves. If only in this world we have hope, 
then we are most miserable. 

It is in the promise of the advent, the coming Christ, 
that men may lift up their heads, knowing that their 
redemption draweth nigh. However we may agree or 
disagree about Christ on other points, or as to the physi¬ 
cal rationale of this point, it is only in a doctrine of 
judgment that we may have hope. That coming to 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 127 


judge may try us as by fire. Even so, if God will but 
justify His Fatherhood. We shrink from the punish¬ 
ment due our sins, but we can bear it. We cannot bear 
the appalling thought that God has absolutely and 
finally withdrawn Himself from us. 

In what does the individual judgment consist ? 

We remember that we are on but speculative ground 
here. The Fact of judgment as a rational necessity is 
bound up with the doctrine as a religious tenet. As to 
the nature and mode of it, one man’s speculation is as 
good as another’s with the qualifications and limitations 
of education and intellectual powers. 

Following the analogy of the judgments we have 
already noted down, we would say that the final judg¬ 
ment of this dispensation is in the nature of striking a 
balance between good and evil, and so manifesting the 
beauty and majesty of goodness as to make it the one 
thing worth seeking, the knowledge of which is eternal 
life, and ignorance of which is eternal death. After 
such a judgment by contrast, mankind is on a higher 
plane spiritually than before (not in achievement, but 
in potency), because he sees more clearly the hateful¬ 
ness, the uncleanness, and the falseness of sin. 

This was true of Christ’s first judgment of His own 
people. Judaism was burnt out, purified. There are 
as good Jews (in the Family of God) to-day as there are 
good Christians. But Christianity became a loftier 
ideal, a higher and nobler inspiration than the burnt-out 
Judaism. The balance struck in Judea left mankind in 
a better way. The Jewish dispensation did its work 
and achieved its ultimate. The Christian dispensation 
is a clearer revelation of God, and therefore a brighter 


128 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


illumination in the pathway of the race back to its 
source. 

The final grouping in one flock, of Jew and Gentile, 
of Roman and Protestant, of every warring partisan in 
our sect-torn commonwealth of religious manifestation, 
is a perfectly logical development of the thought of the 
judgment. 

The comings of God in judgment have not been to 
utterly condemn, but to purify as by fire. The judg¬ 
ments have not been final save in a limited way as apply¬ 
ing to an epochal existence. They have been to sift 
and try nations and churches for the purpose of finally 
uniting the now discordant and unharmonious elements. 
Jew and Gentile, Greet and Roman, bond and free in 
religious things have the common heritage of sonship. 
All partisan Shibboleths must soften, are softening, 
under the influence of the Spirit, and blend in the Abba 
Father of the Sons of God. 

Individual judgment, it seems to me, will follow a like 
course. The balance will be struck between bad and 
good, sham and reality, false and true. Separation of 
the one from the other, as taught in our Lord’s parables, 
must inevitably follow. This is the first stage of judg¬ 
ment, but we do not read anywhere that it is the last 
stage. On the contrary, we read everywhere, both in 
and between the lines, that final separation lies in the 
destruction of evil and the survival of good. This is 
natural. Good is the law of God’s universe. All good 
things are helped on in expression and development by 
the nourishment offered on every hand. All things 
work together for good. While evil is an alien thing, 
it has no root in the real universe. It must finally starve. 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 129 


The New Testament teaching of the judgment is that 
evil will be overcome by good, that the righteous will go 
into Life Eternal, the unrighteous into death eternal. 

But these terms have a far wider and deeper meaning 
than are commonly attributed to them. 

Life Eternal is to know God, so Jesus declared. The 
righteous achieve their individual purpose by arriving 
at the knowledge of God. Death eternal must be the 
opposite of this, not to know God. 

Judgment is the uncovering and revelation of a fact 
of which men may not at all be conscious, until they 
see it in the vivid flash of His sudden coming to 
judge. 

That light shows man his own place, to which he 
must go by virtue of a law as unalterable as God, for it 
is God’s will. 

Whether a man’s own place in the hour of his death 
or judgment is a perpetual place is a question about 
which men dispute. It does not lie within the principle 
of these pages to believe that it is.* We need not dog¬ 
matize, and we need not feel it incumbent for the saving 
of our orthodoxy to he dogmatized to. The Church 
leaves it an open question. I believe that whenever and 
wherever a man turns to God, out of whatsoever muck 
heap of sensualism or degradation, he will see God’s 
face and not His back, His smile and not His frown. 

And this belief does not, I repeat for fear of miscon¬ 
struction, alter our instinctive belief in the certain pun¬ 
ishment of sin. As a man sows, so shall he also reap. 
God has written that everywhere in His universe, so 


Vide Chap. V., p. 62. 


130 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


that he that runs may read. The refusal to know God 
will always be accompanied by the stinging retribution 
of the withholding of God’s face. It is an awful thought 
that without doubt a man shall receive back for the 
deeds which he has done in his body. A much more 
awful thought than to believe that on his death-bed a 
man by a word or prayer can escape the penalty and 
retribution for his sins. 

What will be the nature of our judgment by Christ ? 

The idea of the earthly court of justice is hard to 
efface from our minds. It has a certain rudimentary 
connection (speaking in human terms) with the Great 
Assize, but as carried out in detail it is absurd and irra¬ 
tional. We always limit it by conditions of space and 
time, forgetting that we will after the end of the world 
be in the midst of and subject to spiritual and eternal 
conditions. 

But from the light we get through our Lord’s para¬ 
bles of the judgment, we infer that the whole man will 
be judged. Not his opinions, or his works, or his 
words, or his deeds, or any group of human experiences 
by themselves, but the whole man as manifested in his 
character. Every idle word, it is true, will be brought 
into judgment, but not as an idle word ; every evil 
thought and deed, but not as thoughts and deeds. It is 
the aggregate of words, deeds, thoughts that make up 
the whole man. These details will be judged and tested 
as they have entered into the complete character. The 
awe of living is increased by realizing that the judgment 
is a process of every day and hour. God makes up no 
accounts. We do that. The judgment will reveal us 
to ourselves. As we go to our own place, it will be 


THE ORDEAL OF HUMANITY—THE JUDGMENT. 131 


with the knowledge that there is no place else into 
which we could possibly enter. 

There is nothing more solemn, more awful, more terri¬ 
ble in its way ; there is nothing that tends toward the 
lifting up of higher ideals and the practice of a purer 
life, than for a man to face the fact that he is going to 
the place for which he is fit. There is no harshness in 
it. It is no whim of an over-sensitive Divine Being. 
It is not an arbitrary decision of a power outside of him¬ 
self. It is the only thing for him. That without doubt 
he shall go to his own place. 

What is the hope—not only for the degraded wicked 
—but for the average man who shrinks from what he 
knows to be rational, scientific, and inevitable—namely, 
that he shall go to the place for which he is fit ? 

The weakness that enters the strongest life, the taint 
that discolors the soundest character, the influences that 
traverse the finest manhood, the triviality that dilutes 
the purest womanhood—all these are with the noblest 
and best. 

The hope of mankind lies in the fact that the judge 
of mankind will be the Son of man. God would be 
just and holy and righteous, but He needs humanity 
for its judgment, and He has given it into the hands of 
One acquainted with human weaknesses, temptations, 
trials. 

Moreover, we see that this One must have been our 
Judge, because He is also our Standard. We are judged 
by Him, because He is the measure of our achievement. 
Human goodness is not a mere metaphysical proposition. 
It is not measured by “ thou shalt’ * or “ thou shalt 
notit is concreted In One who has plumbed the 


132 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


depths of all human experience, and run the scales of all 
human effort. 

The Only Son is the example for the other sons. 
Therefore He cometh to judge us, both quick and dead, 
and in this coming of the Son of Man lies our hope. 

Upon the murky clouds and steaming mists that rise 
above the reeking heap of man’s sins and wicked break¬ 
age of divine counsel, plays a tender light. Through 
the heavy veil of fleshly wearing it pierces. It is the 
star of Bethlehem. The hope of a man lies in the mes¬ 
sage of that star, that God is our Father, and that He 
means us to realize our sonship. 

The Son may wander in the far country and eat with 
the swine—spendthrift of his inheritance—but the far 
country is not his final place, although his own place for 
the time. 

The eternal relationship of God and man is that of 
Father and child. The awful judgment that consigns 
men to suffer the results of sin, lifts men to the higher 
knowledge that they are redeemed finally from the 
power of sin. 


CHAPTEK IX. 


THE INSPIRATION OF HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 

“ I believe in the Holy Ghost." Apostles' Creed. 

“ But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Fa¬ 
ther will send in My name, He shall teach you all things and 
bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said 
unto you." St. John 14 : 26. 

“ Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will 
guide you into all truth." St. John 16 :13. 

“ It weighs upon me heavily sometimes to think how far all 
but a few are from being able even to entertain the idea of the 
indwelling in them of the original power of their life. True, 
God is in every man, else how could he live the life he does live ? 
But that life God keeps alive for the hour when He shall inform 
the will, the aspirations, the imagination of the man. When the 
man throws wide the door to the Father of his spirit, when his 
individual being is thus supplemented—to use a poor, miser¬ 
able word—with the individuality that originated it, then is the 
man a whole, healthy, complete existence. Then, indeed, and 
then only, will he do no wrong, think no wrong, love perfectly 
and be right merry. Then will he scarce think of praying be¬ 
cause God is in every thought, and enters anew with every sen¬ 
sation. Then will he forgive and endure, and pour out his soul 
for the beloved who yet grope their way in doubt and passion. 
Then every man will be dear and precious to him, even the worst, 
for in him also lies an unknown yearning after the same peace 
wherein he rests and loves." George Macdonald. 

With this statement we reach the third grand division 
of the Creed. 


134 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


First, we found God, the Father Almighty, Creator of 
heaven and earth and man. 

Second, we found Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our 
Lord, whose place in the continuous creation is to reveal 
the complete Fatherhood, and by this manifestation to 
bring God and man together and make them at one. 

These are the phenomena with which heretofore the 
Creed has dealt, God, man, and the Link uniting them, 
and bringing them into living relation with each other. 

This is the divine side of the problem of God in His 
world. The human side is not yet worked out. Man 
has his share in this eternal Atonement. 

Is he left to achieve this alone ? 

As we think of his origin we cannot naturally infer 
that he is alone at any point of his progress outward 
from or inward toward, God. We cannot rationally be¬ 
lieve that he is left in isolation to work out the human 
equation. 

As a matter of record we find that Jesus Christ prom¬ 
ised him help. Over and over again He declared that 
He would send another One whom He called by various 
names, but always the same person, the Holy Spirit of 
God, the Life-Giver. This One was not to be in the 
form of man as He was, but to abide with and in man 
for the accomplishment of a threefold task. 

1. To interpret and explain Christ’s works and words. 
Man was still in spiritual infancy, and much of Christ’s 
mission was in an unknown tongue. ‘ 4 1 have yet many 
things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”* 

This ran through His whole ministry, and applied. 


* St. John 16 :12. 


THE INSPIRATION OP HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 135 


indeed, to His whole life. The deep truths of the In¬ 
carnation, the final destiny of the human, the marvels 
of man’s relationship with God, the full meaning of 
pain, the whole mystery of godliness, God manifest in 
the flesh—these were truths that needed a larger growth 
in manhood before they could be understood, and their 
practical application to life on the earth comprehended. 
The Life-Giver was to give vitality to many a parable, 
to throw light on many a dark saying e’er the human 
divine life should be wholly manifested. The earthly 
life was the image of the spiritual. The Spirit would 
give the earthly image life. 

2. The second purpose of the Holy Spirit, “ working 
in us mightily,” was to guide men into all truth. 
“ When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide 
men into all truth.” This is a broad statement, and 
open to the broadest interpretation. 

All truth means more than all religious truth, using 
the word “ religious” in its commonly accepted, narrow 
significance. 

Properly speaking, truth is not amenable to sub¬ 
divisions. We speak for purposes of convenience of re¬ 
ligious truth and worldly truth. But in its full mean¬ 
ing Truth is one. God’s life in a flower is as much a 
manifestation of divine truth as God’s life in a saint. 
When Christ, therefore, made this large promise of 
guiding into all truth, His meaning must have been 
that the Spirit of truth would lead (through whatsoever 
ways) the mental, physical, and spiritual life of man 
into perfect knowledge. Men make many puzzling 
experiments and bide for a time in half truths and 
errors; the Spirit is given to lead man through this 


136 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


tangle into the open country, where he will see clearly 
and apply his knowledge accurately. The truths of 
natural science are as necessary in their way to God’s 
revelation of Himself as the truths of spiritual science. 

This is God’s world. We are God’s children. He 
will interpret the creation to the creature, slow process 
as it is. The truths of physics, of mechanics, these are 
segments of the whole circle. God must be in these as 
truly as in the sacraments or in St. Paul’s epistles. 

3. The third function of the Spirit of God, is—thus 
interpreting and guiding—to so inspire men as to lift 
them “ through things to God. ” When we perceive God 
in Christ and in the earth, we are prepared to realize God 
in ourselves. Having borne the image of the earthy, 
we are led to see that we shall bear the image of the 
heavenly. The Holy Spirit is the vital force of self- 
realization. 

But why an interpreter at all ? Is not truth sufficient 
of itself ? History answers in the negative. Truth, 
while always latent in God’s creation, has ever need of 
special prophets from age to age. Newton did not create 
the law of gravitation, he brought it to light. Colum¬ 
bus did not plant this western continent, he uncovered 
it to the eyes of men. Franklin and Edison are not the 
authors of the electric current, but its interpreters. So 
have moral and spiritual truths been quickened into 
manifestation by the Spirit of God. Truth its own in¬ 
terpretation ! It has been the scorn and hissing and 
mocking of men. It was nailed to the Cross. 

Men are but slowly spelling out to-day, under the in¬ 
spiration of the Holy Spirit, the meaning of such com¬ 
monplaces as disease and pain. We have a growing con- 


THE INSPIRATION OP HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 137 


viction that their interpretation does not inhere in the 
terms of their human manifestation. It is so with scores 
of other experiences of humanity. 

Is the Spirit of God as Life-Giver a new thing in the 
world dating from the historical beginnings of Chris¬ 
tianity ? 

Far from it; it is an old factor of God the Creator in 
His dealings with earth and men. The Spirit has always 
been working, was ever the agent of God. Mankind 
has often felt its influence without recognizing its dis¬ 
tinct personality. 

Personality was not revealed, and is even to-day the 
vaguest conception of Christianity. The fact of the 
Spirit of God, as the agent of God, seems to me to be as 
clearly revealed in nature and spirit as the fact of the 
historical Jesus of Nazareth. But with all our defini¬ 
tions, the Holy Spirit of God is only, to us. His mode 
of imparting His Life. The Christian teaching con¬ 
cerning the Spirit, as distinguished from all other 
thoughts or conceptions, seems to me to be a realization 
of the fact that every good and perfect gift, life in all 
its forms, comes, not somehow, but from God. The 
Spirit is the medium by which we are taught to recog¬ 
nize the Power outside of ourselves upon which we de¬ 
pend, to be not a force, not an energy, but a guiding 
love. 

We have met this Spirit as the power of God before 
in our inquiry as to the primary facts of religious truth. 

(a) In the first so-called break of continuity, when 
life transformed matter. It was not God the Father 
direct, but God by His Spirit brooding over matter, by 
which the life of God was imparted to the material 


138 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


creation of God. The Spirit hovered over the face of 
the deep. The Life- Giver fertilized the earth. 

( l ) In the Incarnation the selfsame Spirit brooded in 
like manner, apparently in the same fashion, and with 
the same energy, not over earthly matter, but over flesh, 
and the Virgin bore a Son conceived by the Holy Ghost. 

After earth and man were established in relationship, 
after creation and long before Incarnation, it is recorded 
that God by His Spirit selected inspired men to perform 
certain works. The workmen Bezaleel and Aholiab 
were filled with “the Spirit of God in wisdom and 
understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of 
workmanship.”* 

The operations of the Spirit as the vital agent of God 
are not narrowed, therefore, to any special channel. 
V r e recognize it always as interpreting, teaching, guid¬ 
ing, illuminating, in one word, inspiring. Tt had been 
given in government, in art, in medicine, but men had 
grown to look upon it as a part of themselves, as an 
attribute of humanity rather than a gift of the divine. 
Later Bezaleels, endowed with power beyond that of their 
fellow-workmen, spoke of their own human genius and 
cunning. 

This was one of the fundamental truths of God in re¬ 
lation to man which Christ brought to light. He de¬ 
clared that the Spirit which guided men, Bezaleel, John 
Baptist, and after them, as before them, a long beadroll 
of material and spiritual artificers, to be from God, and 
to be a part of God. He promised through this Spirit 
that men should not only have life, but have it more 


Ex. 81: 2, 3. 


THE INSPIRATION OF HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 139 


abundantly, in fuller measure than ever before. He 
declared that while it included all minor phases of truth 
manifestation, it was given for a nobler purpose than 
these while including them—viz., to inspire not a part 
of man, but the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, and 
to lift the whole man Godward as his final destiny. 

The belief in the Holy Ghost, then, is a belief in the 
inspiration of humanity by God. This means much. 

(a) Man is not left alone to work out the earthly equa¬ 
tion and to achieve his destiny. He has an endowment 
of that very Life by which the world was once made. 
He has his share of that Spirit by which the perfect man 
was conceived. 

(£) The confusion and chaos of which every man is 
conscious in his efforts to achieve sonship are not final. 
The spirit of truth is working through these, and with 
man, shaping them. 

The confused appearance of a great building under 
construction has been not inaptly likened to the state of 
man in this world. The scaffolds and debris and tim¬ 
bers and stones lie about without apparent meaning. 
But there is meaning. There is a purpose working 
through the disorder. There is a controlling mind that 
looks to the completed temple. There is a life-giver 
guiding and controlling the placing of every stick and 
stone. So with man. “ There is a spirit in man : and 
the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understand¬ 
ing.”* Earthly discord and confusion are processes, not 
results. The Spirit broodeth over it all with a purpose 
which no man can finally bring to naught. 


* Job 82 : 8. 


140 


THE FACTS AFTD THE FAITH. 


As God breathed once and man became a living soul, 
again and man became a perfect type, so in another out- 
breathing of the divine, man became conscious of his 
divine endowment and its use. The work of the Spirit 
is the completion of God’s connection with humanity. 

This complete revelation of Father, Son, and Spirit, 
theologians call the Trinity. Speculation as to the 
metaphysics of personality is beyond the scope of these 
pages. The word Trinity is a human word. The tradi¬ 
tional statement of Trinity is found nowhere in the 
Scriptures, and has ever been, in definition, a stumbling- 
block rather than a help to seekers after truth. 

The mass of Christian disciples know the Trinity as a 
formula and accept it as such. The popular conception 
of it is much in the form of an arithmetical puzzle. 
Unitarianism was a revolt from the irrational juggle 
with words in which Calvinism expressed its belief in a 
practical Tritheism. 

The Apostles’ Creed, like the New Testament Scrip¬ 
tures, sets forth certain facts which I am endeavoring to 
show are in themselves rational facts. Concerning 
theories on these facts the Creed does not deal, and no 
Christian man need worry himself in the speculation. 
Vagueness and dissatisfaction and puzzle are involved 
in opinions, not necessarily in the facts themselves. 

We have found that the three great fundamental 
phenomena of the Creed corresponding to the rational 
demands and aspirations of humanity are (1) God in 
creation, bringing earth and man into relation with 
Himself ; (2) God in man revealing Himself more clearly, 
showing forth His Fatherhood through an Only Son ; 
(3) God coming to and abiding in earth and man by a 


THE INSPIRATION- OF HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 141 


Spirit of Life and Truth, by which man is enlightened, 
guided, and inspired to do his work and complete his 
part of the great Purpose of God in His world. With 
these facts the Scriptures give pause, and for them the 
Creed has no set definition. Human statements of the 
Trinity are apprehensions of the relation of these facts 
one to another ; but are by no means a definition of God. 

The historical gift of the Holy Spirit, as the crown of 
Jesus’ work, must occupy our attention for a moment. 

There are always epochal seasons which mark what 
we may call, for lack of a clearer knowledge of His laws, 
God’s interference with the moral or physical continuity 
of His universe. 

The Creation, the Incarnation, the destruction of 
Jerusalem, the conversion of Constantine (which, whether 
real or sham, was a political reality which carried with 
it all the force of an honest profession) are all instances. 
We look forward, moreover, to another at the end of 
this dispensation, when as the seers of science tell us, 
this earth will no longer be able to sustain life. 

The coming of the Holy Spirit after the withdrawal 
of Christ’s personal presence was marked, according to 
the record, by strange sights and sounds at the Feast of 
Pentecost.* The details of this may or may not be in 
figurative language. The tongues of fire and the sound 
as of a rushing, mighty wind, are not the marvellous 
things to which any but the vulgar eye is directed. The 
marvel is the historical evidence that from that hour 
humanity received an inspiration, a veritable baptism of 
the power and life of God. 


* Acts 2 :1-13. 


142 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


I have long since ceased to wonder or to be mentally 
or spiritually confused by the miracles of the early 
Christian times. I am overwhelmed by a greater won¬ 
der than any details, however extraordinary, of the way 
in which God comes to His world, the fact that He 
comes at all. 

Professor Huxley or Professor Tyndall may easily con¬ 
fuse the rational mind with brilliant word juggling and 
laughter-provoking distortions of the New Testament 
narratives. The evidence as to this or that miracle may 
be riddled and pulled to pieces to the satisfaction of any 
one who seeks satisfaction in that sort of amusement. 
The miracles are not proof of Christianity. That water 
was turned into wine directly instead of indirectly may 
be absurd to one. That Christ healed diseases may seem 
unscientific to another. But that the so-called miracu¬ 
lous underlies all historical development is a fact from 
which no man can escape, and which Mr. Spencer prac¬ 
tically admits, when he says we are in the presence of an 
Infinite Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. 
The great miracle of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost lies in 
the fact that from that hour old things passed away and 
all things became new. Over certain men and women 
came a spiritual change, for which no other rational ex¬ 
planation has been given than that the breath of God 
inspired them with spiritual power not of this earth. 

"We are not in the realm of speculation now, but of 
fact. A handful of unlearned men, numbering among 
them such cowards as Peter, and such materialists as 
Thomas, were so endowed that they revolutionized 
the religious practices and opinions of the civilized 
world. 


THE INSPIRATION OF HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 143 


The first century of Christianity is a greater miracle 
on its natural side than any other of which I find a 
record. It is the story of the lifting of mankind from 
moral degradation to moral splendor. Before and since, 
nations and men have been rebaptized and uplifted, but 
the human conditions have been obvious, and perfectly 
patent reasons have been observed in operation. Mo¬ 
hammedanism is a fair illustration. It seems to me 
that Mohammed had a message and occupied a real 
place in the development G-odward of certain races. 
But Mohammedanism held out inducements to the lower 
sensual nature, and while it stimulated to martyrdom it 
linked with the name of God a sensual reward. Death 
for the faith, irrespective of character, was a small price 
to pay for the pleasures of the Paradise of Mohammed’s 
promise. 

The gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost appealed to 
no such passions. It was not an aspiration from within, 
but an inspiration from without. It did not create a 
new world or new circumstances. It did not summon 
to the vague mysticisms of a religious life apart from all 
contact with earth and man. The Spirit acted in men 
as God’s Spirit is ever represented as acting ; it infused 
its life current into what already was, and redeemed it 
from imperfect efforts to perfect achievement. 

So God moved upon the deep in Creation, on the 
womb of Mary in Incarnation, and so the Spirit of God 
at Pentecost descended upon humanity as it was. 

It was Peter and James and John and Thomas who 
went forth, new born with this Inspiration of humanity— 
so inspired that down to this day they have been as 
channels of it to others. 


144 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


How ? To be exact, how may we say that the Spirit 
of God inspired humanity ? 

We can no more trace the process than we can study 
the life of God entering the roots of a rose-bush, and 
lifting itself gradually into that miracle of color and 
fragrance, a rose. 

But we do see the rose, and we see the evidences of 
the Spirit, while we cannot trace its working in man. 
Christ said, “ Ye shall know them by their fruits.” 

Is there a way in which the natural man can see the 
rationalism of believing that God by the Spirit of Life 
is the direct and certain inspiration of every man who 
cometh into the world ? 

God is in nature. The Life of God abides in plant 
and tree which bear fruits or blossoms after their kind. 
It is the spirit of Truth that thus abides, else a rose-tree 
might bear a magnolia blossom. God is expressing 
Himself everywhere, but everywhere perfectly and under 
the limitations which He Himself hath set. The per¬ 
fection of His continuous creation lies not in continual 
interference, special providences and the like, but in the 
realization of every created thing after its kind. 

Man is not a thing, however, but a power.* In that 
he is different from all other created entities. The rose- 
tree has one line of development. The man is conscious 
of a certain duality. In living our life we find that we 
are waging a conflict. Our earthly and physical nature 
is warring against our spiritual nature. The lower side 
of man is seeking to assert itself as the best and chiefest 
side of life. Physical sensuality or intellectual selfish¬ 
ness strives with spiritual achievement. 

* Note 15, p. 233. 


THE INSPIRATION OF HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 145 


While the battle goes on, somehow we realize, not out 
of books, but from our consciousness, that there is a 
“ power not ourselves which makes for righteousness,” 
as Matthew Arnold put it. This power is not the 
enemy of the body or the mind. Its influence is not to 
destroy either, but to elevate both, and to consecrate 
their natural aspirations to the development, as against 
the degradation of the whole man. 

This is an experience of the natural man. The ex¬ 
planation of it does not seem to me to have been ex¬ 
hausted as given by the English philosopher, who holds 
it in vague solution as the power outside ourselves, 
which makes for righteousness. 

Christ has uttered His word concerning this power. 
It includes all the natural man concedes, but something 
more. 

His word is that the power “ not ourselves” is the 
presence of God by His Spirit in every human life, lift¬ 
ing it through its natural environment, and inspiring it 
to work out its perfect manifestation through and by 
means of that environment. 

Before Christ’s promise came to its fulfilment, in the 
gift of the Spirit, this inspiration, while always in man, 
had never been correlated with man’s divine sonship. 

Now it is seen in the light of His word, and of human 
experience since Pentecost, that the Spirit of God is not 
a vague possibility that may come, but a real and actual 
possession of every man, a portion of man’s heritage as 
children of God. 

But men will utilize this Spiritual deposit as they are 
prepared and fit for it. Some men are blind to the 
glories of a sunset, some are deaf to music, although 


146 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


they both see and hear. The Spirit of God demands 
receptivity for its full and free working in any man. 

How may men be guided by the Spirit into all truths ? 

Broadly speaking, by laying themselves open to it as 
the earth receives the Spirit of Life by lying receptive 
under the sunlight and the shadow. 

The Church teaches certain outward channels of the 
Spirit as prayer and the sacraments and the practice of 
good. Of these ritual observances with their signifi¬ 
cance I shall have occasion to speak in the next chapter, 
but of the Practice of Good, as a channel of the Spirit 
of God, the natural man, the sceptic, the agnostic, the 
doubter may themselves be the judges. The inspiration 
of humanity comes through our contact with God on 
the one side, and our fellow-creatures on the other. 
There is a mystery here which has its place, too, in the 
hardest materialism, but it is not all mystery. 

How God can come to me through my brother I do 
not know, but that He does come I know. 

Christ taught no one thing more positively than this. 
“ Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these, My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”* And 
in the great parable of the Judgment, f the test of God’s 
life in the man was not how he pronounced a shibboleth, 
but that he had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, 
ministered to the sick, and visited the unfortunate. 

The natural man may have the inspiration of God 
and know that the Spirit worketh in him mightily if he 
doeth the works. We are assured of this, that doing the 
will he will be taught of the doctrine. \ 


* Matt. 25 : 40. 


f Ibid. 


X John 7 :17. 


THE INSPIRATION OF HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 147 


The Spirit of God in man. Inspiration a necessary 
factor of sonship. If this be true, the operative force 
of God is working in men as once it worked over chaos. 
And if this be true, we may all be as truly inspired as 
Isaiah, St. Paul, or St. John. 

The rational thinker sees this, but the traditional 
Christian shrinks from it. Why ? 

Because of a narrow view of inspiration. Because 
men have somehow grown to think that God has nothing 
further to reveal, or that there are none holy enough to 
be His channels. The records do not show that God 
has ever been over particular in the choice of His in¬ 
struments. He called men fitted by human gifts to 
carry out certain of His divine purposes. To this end 
He called David and Solomon. He passed over the 
school of the prophets and lifted up a herdman of 
Tekoa.* Later He used a traitor like Judas, a coward 
like Peter, and a brutal materialist like Thomas. After 
this list we will not surely say that God has no fit mes¬ 
sengers for His inspiration in these days, especially as 
He told the filthy Corinthians through St. Paul, that 
their bodies were temples of the Holy Ghost. 

The pages of history glow with proof that Christ’s 
promise of the Spirit was not a narrow little commission 
to a dozen men. The gift of the Spirit was to human¬ 
ity. It has varied in quantity as men have been great 
or little. There are Judes as well as Pauls. It has 
varied in purpose, and so meant more for mankind when 
guiding St. Paul into the truth about the Kesurrection 
than when guiding the modern man of science into truth 


* Amos 1:1. 


148 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


about our bodies. Bat the quality of inspiration and 
the reality must ever have been the same, and I cannot 
see how this can be called a dangerous truth to hold or 
teach. It brings God and man nearer together. It 
makes every-day life a more awful and solemn reality. 
It does not detract from or degrade the inspiration of 
God in Isaiah to realize that by the same inspiration of 
God, He is teaching the nineteenth century after Christ 
some bits of eternal Truth, which are of as much im¬ 
portance as some other bits vouchsafed some centuries 
before Christ. 

The most vital truth of the Christian religion is the 
brooding of the Holy Spirit. We pray every day for 
the “ inspiration” and the “ Spirit” of God to be given 
us in large measure. What do we mean ? Could St. 
Paul have prayed for anything of another kind when he 
sat down to pen the Epistles to the Corinthians or 
Romans ? If we pray for the same spirit, shall we not 
receive it ? If we receive it, have we not the spirit of 
God in exactly the same sense, although because of our 
callousness not to the same degree as St. Paul ? 

I believe that the Holy Spirit of God has been guid¬ 
ing men into all truth in all these years, and I find this 
inspiration of humanity to have been the uplifting and 
ennobling of humanity. I see the mark of the Spirit, 
therefore, in all fine and noble achievements. It glows 
through the colors of Angelo or Raphael, it thrills the 
imagination of Dante or Shakespeare, it throbs in the 
mighty chords of Beethoven or Mozart, and as truly it 
nerves and guides the arm of manual labor, and conse¬ 
crates to divine uses the sordid routine of the kitchen 
maid. 


THE INSPIRATION OF HUMANITY—THE HOLY GHOST. 149 


Is this a degradation of the Holy Ghost ? Nay, but 
the exaltation of humanity. When, therefore, we de¬ 
clare our belief in the Holy Ghost, the Giver of Life, 
we declare that the image of God in us is not a figure of 
rhetoric, but a fact of life ; and that God’s image in us 
will grow to its full proportion in God’s universe, by 
the full play of the Spirit of Life through it, without 
which God Himself had not brought His work to the 
point when He could say, “ Behold it is very good.” 

The sin against the Holy Ghost is a denial of the in¬ 
spiration of man by God, his Father, 


CHAPTER X. 


CHRISTIAN RESTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 

“ I believe in the . . . Holy Catholic Church.” 

Ajpostles' Creed. 

“ There is one body and one spirit.” Eph. 4.4. 

“ And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.” 

Acts 11:26. 

‘‘If we look forward to the fulfilment of the great promise 
which gladdens the future, it is not that there shall ever be, as 
we wrongly read, ‘ one fold,’ one outward society of Christians 
gathered in one outward form, but what answers more truly to 
present experience and reasonable hope, one flock and one shep¬ 
herd.” Bishop Westcott. 

The word Church is not a sacred or divine arrange¬ 
ment of letters. The Creek sunXi^aia meant originally 
an assembly called out of the body of the people for pur¬ 
poses of legislation. It is of small importance to trace 
the gradual narrowing (or broadening) of the word to 
its present accepted significance. 

The qualification “ apostolic” which is used in the 
Nicene Creed is explanatory of the historical origin, 
order, and continuity of the Church. It puts any 
alleged branch of the Church of Christ to the touch¬ 
stone of history. Sinking all minor questions, differ¬ 
ences in order and government, the test of an Apostolic 


CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 151 


Church must be, does it teach the Apostles doctrine, use 
the Apostles’ Institutions, and refer its faith to the 
Scriptures which were the offspring of Apostolic times ? 

Most, if not all Christian Churches are eager to prove 
their loyalty in these matters. Men crave the backing 
of authority in religious as in other teaching. The 
Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, even succession from 
the Apostles after some fashion, are claimed by the 
great mass of those who profess and call themselves 
Christians. We are dealing in this chapter, however, 
with a broader truth than the order of Church govern¬ 
ment, even the divine foundation of the Church itself. 

So much by way of introduction. 

The first point to be observed in considering this arti¬ 
cle of the Creed is, that it is not a thing apart from and 
having no special relation with what precedes it in the 
development of Christian teaching. It is not thrust in, 
but articulated with the other propositions. Indeed, 
may we not say we believe in the Holy Catholic Church 
because of what has gone before ? 

The Church is the outward body of this Spirit of Life 
which we saw in the last chapter to be the inspiration of 
humanity. It is the mode through which God dwells 
with His family. 

For the Spirit abides in some form always, when under 
human apprehension. It is not a vague and ghostlike 
influence hovering over the earth, but becomes apparent 
and effectual through some earth form or image. In 
the creation of the world there was no Spirit (appre¬ 
hended by a physical creature at least) until it was mani¬ 
fested through the vegetable and animal world to which 
it gave life. The Spirit must have an abode in earth. 


152 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


in plant, in animal, in man. What the Spirit’s exist¬ 
ence apart from these manifestations may be we do not 
know. It doth not yet appear. To us it appears ex¬ 
pressed in terms which the human mind can apprehend. 

The Church, then, we understand to be the sphere of 
the Spirit’s working in connection with man. Just as 
the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth was the vehicle of ex¬ 
pressing the Son of God, the Church is the vehicle of 
expressing the Spirit of God. 

Does this seem to narrow the broad stream of God's 
life in the world ? We do not say that God’s Spirit 
works only in and through the Church. We do not 
believe that. 

But we perceive that the Incarnation is not yet com¬ 
plete from the human side, nor will it be until man has 
been entirely redeemed out of his disobedience, igno¬ 
rance, and weakness, into his own proper place in the 
Family of God. The Church is the working instrument 
of this redemption on the human side—our side. 

A definition may clarify this idea. 

The Church is an organism (with certain notes) for 
the preservation and propagation of truths which men 
must live in order to realize their ultimate destiny. 
The Spirit of God dwells in this body to ripen the fruits 
of the Spirit, as it dwells in the body of the earth to 
ripen the fruits of the soil. The Church is an instru¬ 
ment of perfection and redemption in two ways. 

1. By maintaining the ideal of God for man, as seen 
in the Incarnation. 

2. By nourishing and developing this ideal in men, 
by means of certain institutions, some of man’s own de¬ 
vising, but mainly of Christ’s institution. 


CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 153 


Is this a rational idea ? Does it accord with the facts 
of life ? Is the Church conception a natural one for 
human beings, or is it an outworn superstition ? Some 
people honestly think the latter. I am concerned now 
only in setting forth the fact of the Church institution 
as on the whole a reasonable thing. The abuses and 
abortions of ecclesiasticism involve another question 
altogether. 

There is an organism which some people think is also 
a divine institution, which offers a fair analogy for our 
consideration. This organism is the State. 

What State ? England ? Russia ? United States ? 

No one in particular, any more than when in speaking 
of the Church of Christ we mean its manifestation at 
Rome, Canterbury, or Moscow. 

The State as an abstract proposition is an organism to 
preserve and propagate (among its members) certain 
truths, which it does (1) by an ideal—its constitutional 
form of government; (2) by the nourishment and devel¬ 
opment of this ideal—parties, economic theories, parlia¬ 
ment, legislatures, courts, etc. 

Church and State equally hold men together by lofty 
ideals in one homogeneous body, so that as a whole they 
accomplish a certain destiny. God’s life in the nation 
works through and expresses itself by means of individ¬ 
ual citizenship. God’s life in the Church expresses 
itself in that citizenship which St. Paul declared to be 
in heaven. 

It is absurd to think of seventy millions of people liv¬ 
ing in the southern half of the North American Conti¬ 
nent without a common life, a common ideal, and some 
outward and visible means of living the one and attain- 


154 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


ing the other. We do not complain that our manhood 
is degraded because of the constitution and laws of our 
country. We do not talk of slavery and superstition 
because we are taught to believe in the majesty and 
glory of the Flag, although it in itself is only a bit of 
silk or bunting. The ideal embraced in the unalterable 
thirteen stripes, and the increasing field of stars, makes 
the difference between a Family with a common pur¬ 
pose, and seventy millions of savages with seventy mil¬ 
lion contrary purposes. 

If the Church on the lowest ground of approach ap¬ 
proves itself a rational proposition, we may advance 
with confidence and expectation to a consideration of 
those “ notes” of the Church of which the historian 
must take cognizance as well as the philosopher. The 
note of Apostolicity has been already explained. 

The Church is One. 

Oneness in itself is Unity with God. Christ’s great 
prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s 
Gospel emphasizes the importance of this Oneness. 
Men are called in one hope of their calling. There is 
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One Spirit. The 
Church is declared to be One Body, because there is but 
One Head, and it is pervaded by One Spirit of Life. 
In other words, the Church is not a collection of indi¬ 
viduals or bodies, but a Family of the Father-God. It 
derives its Oneness from its Head and its Spirit. 

But the facts on the surface seem to be against 
this. How is the Church One, when we may count 
hundreds of organizations, self-styled churches, with 
names and denominations indicative of wide diversities 
of opinion and practice, each claiming some exclusive 


CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 155 


deposit, or exploiting some exclusive tenet—all claiming 
apostolicity alike ?* 

Looked at from the vulgar point of view, the obvious 
facts are against the Oneness of Christ’s Church. But 
there is another and truer point of view, which is that of 
Christ. 

There is the One Head and many members. There 
is the One Spirit and many variations of its manifesta¬ 
tion and working. 

The Church is One in its ideal. So we have fine ideals 
unrealized to our senses, but apparent to the eye of 
faith. I believe in One Church, as I believe in One 
nation under One Flag, although the clamor of voices 
on partisan platforms seems to deny this Oneness. True, 
there are divisions—serious and important divisions on 
serious and important matters. So there are in the 
nation, or in a wider view, in the common citizenship 
of the world. We differ as citizens. The nation is 
splintered in as many fragments as the Church, to the 
outward eye. Our chief men differ on the gravest propo- 
sitions of administration and finance. The Constitution 
is a source of many interpretations. And yet in spite 
of these differences the nation is one at the bottom and 
the Church throughout the world is at one in the Spirit¬ 
ual fundamentals ; and even outside the visible Church, 
there is an approach to a common belief expressed with 
more or less vagueness, by most men, concerning the 
three great facts which lie at the root of the religious 
instinct—God, Duty, and Immortality. 

The Church, therefore, is not a club of self-righteous 


* Note 16. 


156 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


Saints. It is, broadly speaking, coextensive in ideal 
with the desire of humanity. It is One in the ideal it 
upholds for all men everywhere. It is One in present¬ 
ing a type of what is to be in the final working out of 
the image of God in man—one flock with one Shepherd. 

As to denominations, then ! 

This Oneness of the Church of Christ seems to lift 
the Church above the denominational bars and hedges 
which have been placed, or which have grown up, by 
the limitations of human aspiration, and out of the 
narrowness of human ideas. The Communion Office 
expresses this in that noble prayer of thanksgiving when 
it speaks of the Church as “the whole company of 
faithful people.” 

We do not for a moment lack in appreciation of the 
underlying meaning of denominational names and propo¬ 
sitions. They are local, temporary, historical, and 
therefore have value in a way. 

But no man is baptized into the Church of Christ 
merely as a Baptist, a Presbyterian, a Roman Catholic, 
a Methodist, or an Anglican. Through these doors men 
enter the larger Church of God’s Family. This or that 
name, or the things for which they stand, may have 
helped them, and unquestionably do, but they are the 
scaffolding about the finished building, or like husks 
about the nut, useless and thrown aside when the meat 
is found. 

Names do not represent the Church. They seem as 
yet to be necessary because human nature is human nature. 
But we do not rest in names, but in the One name. 

What, then, it may be fairly asked, do I mean by 
being an Episcopalian ? 


CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 157 


What does a citizen mean by being a Republican or a 
Democrat ? His ultimate, if he be a true man, is not to 
wear or to make others wear his party name, but to be 
and to make others good and patriotic citizens. This is 
the political ideal. We see this in those movements of 
dissatisfied majorities which result in “ tidal waves’' at 
the polls. 

The religious ideal is to be a son of God. 

I believe that through this historical branch of the 
Church of Christ I am realizing the Incarnation ideal 
most closely. I believe that within this portion of the 
Body of Christ I can show men the way of realizing 
that they are children of God better than in any other 
portion. We have and hold fast to the Apostolic doc¬ 
trine and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayers. 
We present this truth, as it seems to me, more rationally 
by confining the essentials of membership to the plain 
statements of the Apostles' Creed, with no forcing of 
men's minds into the mould of other men’s opinions 
about those facts. 

These are my reasons for being what I am. I cannot 
conceive of Christianity without some material expres¬ 
sion in a material world. I take the expression that 
seems to me the best historical, scientific, rational, and 
spiritual. 

But this is not a narrow view, excluding all who dis¬ 
agree. The point to be insisted upon is that the Church 
is One. Our endeavor is not to leave men in the por¬ 
tals, but to take them into the Temple. Our ultimate 
is not to be Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, or Anglican 
Churchmen, but children of God, members of one 
Family. 


158 


TIIE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


The Church is Holy. 

It is holy as it is One, first of all in its ideal. Not 
that holiness has always been perfectly expressed in its 
members, hut the Church has always taught holiness 
to be the supreme qualification of its members for per¬ 
fect living. 

It is holy in practice. The actual accomplishments 
of the Church through its members have been and are, 
on the whole, efforts toward truth, and every such effort 
is a holy thing. 

We are quite accustomed to hear this statement doubt¬ 
ed. There are many dark pages in the history of the 
Church of Christ. They have not all been written 
since Christ’s day either. The New Testament never 
shirks the seamy side of the early Christian life. The 
practice of Christian men lias never been on a level 
quite with the ideals of Christ. The Church itself has 
grovelled in the sloughs of error. It has reddened the 
earth with the blood of the innocent. It has devised 
for its own children the tortures which it conceived to 
be the instruments of hell. Its Councils are not un¬ 
tainted with the methods of political strategy. 

And yet ! 

The Church of Christ has been the savor of life in a 
world of unwisdom, ignorance, brutality, selfishness. 
The Spirit of life in the Church has been diverted and 
choked back and miserably abused, because God will 
force no man, but leaves him in the full possession and 
free use of that gift of divine and moral being which 
differentiates him from the brutes. 

With all the mistakes, deliberate opposition to other 
conceptions of truth than its own for the time, the 


CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 159 


Church has been the salvation of the world. It has 
been an extension of the Incarnation, redeeming man 
back into his own place. Its development has been 
along the lines of age development, and it has fallen 
into the mistakes and misconceptions of the ages through 
which it has passed. But the Spirit has gradually been 
guiding it into all truth. The practice of the Church 
to-day amid the ills of the flesh ! Let any fair non- 
Churchman be the witness ! What is it ? Is it not the 
holiest thing in the world ? Is not the work of the 
Church a real projection of Christ in this century, a 
going about doing good ? Man wanders, but the Spirit 
brings him back. Man makes mistakes, the Spirit 
shows him that they are mistakes. The Cross of Christ, 
uplifted to-day amid the chimneys of factories and the 
halls of commerce, proclaims an Institution that has for 
its ultimate, not gain in worldly things, but in character, 
in holiness unto the Lord. 

The Church is holy because of its Founder. There is 
a side even to this outward and visible Church which is 
not human, but divine. Primarily the Church is a 
divine Institution. 

That confession of Peter is the rock of our faith. It 
is on this, not on Peter or any frail human, but on the 
divine in Peter and in all true men, that Christ founded 
His Church—on that instinct in men which recognizes 
Christ to be the Son of the living God. 

A divine Institution, and yet making mistakes from 
generation to generation. Oh, yes, and not such an 
irrational thing either. Man in the image of God has 
been staining and marring it for a much longer period 
than the Christian Church has been working out its 


160 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


destiny with the Divine Life throbbing in its human 
members. The Church is not for an age, but for all 
ages. It is the organism of the Spirit in the sixth cen¬ 
tury, the sixteenth, and nineteenth, as well as the first. 
Each age has, according to its natural development, its 
own moral standards, at which God has had occasion to 
wink in times past and perhaps now. The divinity of 
the Church lies both in her commission and in her final 
accomplishment. We may not stop for results part way. 

Holiness is the ultimate characteristic of the man who 
shall reach his perfect state. An adumbration of that 
holiness is expressed, perhaps, by our Lord when He 
says, “ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God.” Holiness is the final fruit, as the lily from the 
bulb. The divine organism works around both man 
and flower. 

The Church is Catholic. 

(a) It is universal in the sense of time. The ideal of 
humanity which the Church teaches was not new with 
Christ, but declared in clearer language. The Lamb 
was slain from the foundation of the world. So far 
back were the foundations of the Church as the Family 
of God. They appeared above the surface in the Incar¬ 
nation, and in the gift of the Holy Ghost the structure 
took earthly form. The Church of Christ is Catholic 
in the sense that because of the Spirit of God’s life 
which indwells, it connects our present struggle for 
truth with all like struggles in the past. The Church 
is an outward sign of that faith which has been the 
attempted achievement of all the children of God. 

(b) The Church is Catholic as to the truth it holds 
and teaches. Your eager scientist, peering curiously 


CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 161 


into the still hidden secrets of the earth, cries, “ All that 
the bowels of the earth or the depths of the sea still 
hold are parts of the gospel of true Science,” although 
they are as yet withheld from view. Science declares 
and proclaims these facts not yet revealed. Science is 
Catholic, therefore, as to the physical world. The 
Church is Catholic in that she holds and teaches all 
necessary truth. Some things are doubtless yet unre¬ 
vealed, and the Spirit is ever guiding, day unto day 
uttering speech, night after night showing forth knowl¬ 
edge ; but all that men need for their destiny is held 
for them in trust by the Church. This is susceptible of 
proof. What spiritual or moral need of man does the 
Church not respond to in some way ? Sometimes she 
is forced to say, “ It doth not yet appear,” and appeals 
to faith. By virtue of the things that do appear, be¬ 
lieve in the things still hidden ! Certain soils indicate 
the nearness of coal or iron. In this the Church is 
rational. I cannot pierce the mystery of a certain 
human experience. I see its earthly process, but that 
is all; and the earthly process taken by itself brings me 
to confusion. But that is not all, and I know it is not. 
I may not judge before the time shall come. I could 
not see through a block of wood last year. I did do that 
very thing last month. 

(c) The Church is Catholic as toward men. Cod has 
made of one blood all nations in the earth. Men did 
not see this until the blood of all humanity ran red in 
the veins of Christ. Men barely acknowledge it now, 
when the common Fatherhood as expressed in Baptism 
and the common Brotherhood of the Lord’s Supper are 
not fully realized. The Church has ever taught it as a 


162 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


part of the ideal and fact of the Incarnation. We are 
one Family. 

The missionary instinct and spirit of the Church is a 
groping toward a manifestation of this Catholic attribute 
of the Church. 

(d) The Church is Catholic in her practical grasp 
upon and use of all instruments of human achievement, 
and in her application of them to the building up of the 
whole man. No part of him shall be misrepresented or 
unrepresented. To the inspiration of the Church we 
owe those great canvases that are the glory and the joy of 
the painter. Music has struck in her service and for the 
expression of her ideals the finest chords of time. She 
was the nursing mother of the Drama, and Poets have 
found in her the noblest subjects for their pens. 

These are not figures of rhetoric. The glory of the 
Catholic Church is that her Catholicity gathers all men 
from everywhere to worship before the Cross of Him 
who was the Son of man. 

But what of Christian Institutions ? 

In dwelling upon these notes of definition and inter* 
pretation, we may seem to have left out of sight those 
outward and visible signs which are often a subject of 
denial and dispute by many who cannot fail to feel 
somehow the inward and spiritual grace of Christian 
teaching. 

The fact of Christian Institutions underlies all that 
has preceded. It has been my ardent desire to show, 
first of all, that the Creed statement of One Holy Catho¬ 
lic and Apostolic Church refers to no little or narrow 
shrine, nor is it the deep, hoarse cry of any party shib¬ 
boleth. 


CHRISTIAN - INSTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 163 


While the historic Church is in our midst, and we 
press men to enter her portals and to behold the 
fair beauty of her altars, men are ever crying for 
the spirit without the letter, the reality without the 
ritual, the feast of life without the Body and Blood of 
Christ. 

What is the use of the material body ? Can we not 
have the life without the mould ? 

We take our appeal to history. 

We have seen and noted the unquestioned influence 
of Christ in this world. It is an old, trite, well-worn 
theme that from Him the world dates a loftier, finer, 
more perfect life. 

How has this life been handed down and its influence 
poured into the current of human progress ? 

By and through the Institutions of the Church. I 
do not mean to be dogmatic beyond the facts. I do 
not believe that God is confined to any one or score of 
channels in manifesting His Life in this world. But I 
do perceive that Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper 
are not mere names for rites. Somehow they have been 
veritable sacraments by means of which Christ has lifted 
up mankind. These truths that have moulded and 
nourished human life into an increasing perfection have 
been taught and handed down through symbols. I am 
not able to explain the fact that these symbols have 
been the outward signs of the indwelling spirit of Life. 
But neither am I able to explain the mystery of life 
transmission in the realm of Nature. God dwells by 
His Spirit there quite as mysteriously as in the realm of 
Grace. 

The Life of God bloweth as it listeth, and no man, be 


1G4 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


he priest at the altar of religion, or scientific investiga¬ 
tor, scalpel in hand, can tell whence it cometh or whither 
it goeth. 

Therefore we need not be confused by the mystery 
involved in the transmission of spiritual life, along with 
and apparently through, certain phenomena which are 
observed facts. 

No one will pretend that the spirit of Christianity has 
been passed to this generation except through and by 
means of the ideals, moulds, and other helps which seem 
to be the raison d'etre of the outward form of the 
Christian Church. 

The adjective Christian is that we use to denominate 
the best of civilization. 

For good or evil (although the Christian can see no 
justification to-day of the alternative) the Church has 
preserved and handed down the influence that has fos¬ 
tered and nourished this civilization, through her Scrip¬ 
tures, her sacraments, her ministry. 

It is easy enough to stand outside the pale of the 
Church and pick flaws in her theory and practice. It 
is easier to stand within and acknowledge her failures. 
But the appeal of the Church of Christ as to her place 
in the divine economy, in the evolution of human 
affairs, is from her acknowledged past to the rational 
judgment of the present generation. 

The Church is organized effort for good. Her faith 
and practice are on the side of redeeming men from 
selfishness, to be worthy of their vocation as children of 
God. 

It becomes men who wish to realize good in them¬ 
selves and to induce it in others to be a part of the 


CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS—THE CHURCH. 165 


only Catholic organization for the development of the 
image of G-od in man, that exists. 

There are other organizations, other systems of phi¬ 
losophy from which men may make choice. 

Is there any one that has held up in the last nineteen 
centuries a nobler ideal or nourished a diviner life than 
the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church ? 


CHAPTER XI. 


CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALISM—THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 

“ I believe . . . in the Communion of Saints. ” 

Apostles' Greed. 

“ Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great 
a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin 
which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race 
that is set before us.” Heb. 12 :1. 

“ The influence, the preaching, the ministrations are not 
stopped ; they are only transferred to another sphere to be con* 
tinued with intensified energy under spiritual conditions; 
though no material ear may hear the voice, no mortal hand shall 
feel the touch.” Canon Lucock. 

There is no article of the Creed which is so vaguely 
apprehended or realized as this. Our word Communion 
has been turned to so many uses that in this connection 
it has a very perplexing significance, and we fear to dog¬ 
matize as to a definition of sainthood. The conjunction 
of the two ideas therefore forms a blurred and indistinct 
conception. Many repeat the sentence believing there 
is much in it, and necessary to the faith, but what it is 
and how necessary, few really work out in their minds. 

The reason for this is, probably, that while to all 
other articles of the Creed some duties are attached, 
which enable us to work the Faith over into the fact, to 


CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALISM—COMMUNION OP SAIKTS. 167 


this one there are apparently none. And after a fashion 
this is quite true. 

The Communion of Saints is rather a declaration of 
fact which has been already worked out. 

When we reached the point of faith in One Holy 
Catholic and Apostolic Church, it was as though we 
had said, I believe in a family of God, coextensive with 
the creation, although the reciprocal relationship is not 
as yet realized by all its members. The Communion of 
Saints is an expansion of, or corollary of, this fact. We 
believe in the Communion, the fellowship of all the 
members of this family, in a common union of all who 
have striven or are striving for sainthood, whatever we 
may find that to mean. 

There is a profound depth of meaning in this article, 
therefore, in spite of its seeming vagueness and barren¬ 
ness ; and if it is a vital part of the Faith, there must 
be some fact of human existence to correspond, some 
need in the human constitution to which it responds. 

At first we seem to be beaten back. 

This is a practical age, with a trend of material de¬ 
velopment so startling, and so rich in material achieve¬ 
ment, that men easily slip into a belief that they do this 
or that, and forget the sentence with which the great¬ 
est advance of modern progress was ushered in, 1 ‘ What 
hath God wrought ?” We have so far unlocked the 
secrets of the earth and drawn down the latent forces of 
the sky, that we have forgotten that all our power is 
derived. We observe cause and effect, and perceive so 
many of the processes of nature in operation that we 
resent what is called the supernatural, and are inclined 
to disbelieve in all things not apprehended by the senses. 


168 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


We must see with our eyes, touch with our hands, and 
hear with our ears, or else we lightly deny everything 
which has not passed successfully through the crucible 
of human experience. 

Of course this is unscientific and unphilosophical, but 
most men are neither one nor the other. 

By a large body of men Christian supernaturalism is 
talked out of court as being on the surface of it either 
sentimental superstition or mystical twaddle. The mod¬ 
ern Athenian mocks again at the doctrine of the resur¬ 
rection of the dead. 

The rushing prodigious strides of science have but 
brought man to a point where he believes only what 
he has seen and touched—a point, however, which 
was very early reached in the development of the race. 

Communion between Cod and man is not for a mo¬ 
ment conceded. Any opening of the portals of the 
spiritual world, either inward or outward, is denied as 
beneath the contempt of rational man. 

Thomas insists upon thrusting in his audacious hands. 
The Christian is as timid in many cases as the non- 
Christian is sceptical. 

The result of all this is a degrading sort of compro¬ 
mise in the popular mind, akin in origin to the gross 
doctrine of purgatory, which resulted from a denial of 
the education and progress of souls after death. 

A belief in the supernatural is not the offspring of 
Christianity, it is an instinct of humanity as strong as a 
belief in God. 

When it happens, then, that men are required by any 
philosophy of existence to relinquish their dead, they 
will not be reconciled. They may (as many do who 


CHKISTIAN SPIRITUALISM—COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 169 


deny the refined supernatural ism of Christianity) deny 
the presence of God in this world by and through His 
Holy Spirit, but they still make grotesque or pathetic 
efforts to supply the loss in some other way. 

They have been led away or driven away from the 
Christian teaching of the Intermediate State and the 
spiritual progress of souls beyond the grave, and the 
“ many mansions” of our Lord’s accorded glimpses 
within the veil, but they must find rest somewhere for 
the craving of intercourse and knowledge, and connec¬ 
tion with the dead of the past and future. They find 
regeneration, and the persistence of individual life as 
taught in the Resurrection, distasteful, but they take 
refuge in a pagan teaching of Reincarnation, which a 
little thought would show them to be a step out into 
the dark, an exchange of objective for subjective 
annihilation. They will not be influenced by the 
teaching of a communion of saints, but they will 
haunt dark cabinets, and soothe their souls in the rites 
of juggling tricksters which have been exposed over and 
over again. 

These men and women speak pityingly of the credulity 
of the faith which lays hold upon the fact of God in His 
world reconciling it and man to Himself. 

I am not accusing or arraigning the Spiritualist so 
called, any more than the agnostic : my purpose is merely 
to show, themselves being the judges, that Christian 
spiritualism has at least a rational basis, that when the 
Church declares the Communion of Saints to be one of 
her fundamental doctrines she is simply meeting a 
human need. 

What, then, do we mean when we profess this article ? 


170 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


The sentence is (as already stated) an extension 
and amplification of the one that precedes it. The 
Holy Catholic Church is the Communion of Saints, 
past, present, and to come. The Church in this sense 
is a visible organism, the outward form of an organic 
life of which the Communion of Saints is the inner 
manifestation. 

The Creed statement, broadly interpreted, means that 
there is a Fellowship in which mutual aid is given, 
among all those who (as we found in the composition of 
the Church) are striving to realize their common Brother¬ 
hood, under a common Fatherhood. And this is 
achieved through Jesus Christ, Brother and Son, 
whether or not men always know or acknowledge it. 

This involves that God's kingdom, which is one, 
should not be thought of as existing only in this world 
or only in the spiritual world. The kingdom of God 
is both visible and invisible. We see this in the descent 
of Jesus Christ to hades, the under world. In this 
kingdom there is a common warfare against a common 
foe. The martyrs of St. John's vision cry from under 
the altar, How long ! How long, what ? Until this 
warfare be accomplished against sin, suffering, pain, 
death, all enemies of God—a warfare in which we and 
they have equal part and lot. The fellowship of strug¬ 
gle is vivid. 

This Kingdom of God likewise is of the past and 
present. The Transfiguration of Christ was laden with 
this message. Moses and Elias stood for the past, Jesus, 
Peter, James, and John for the present. The Sinai tic 
journey was not the end of the law-givers's work. 
Elijah's gift of the mantle of prophecy was the end of 


CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALISM—COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 171 


an epoch, not finality of his task work. There were 
many links between Moses and the Prophet who should 
arise after him. Their work was in one sense one work. 
Moses reached forward into the future ; it was because 
“ My Father worketli hitherto” that therefore Christ 
worked. 

The Kingdom includes the living and the dead. The 
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is our God, de¬ 
clares that One who knew best of all what He was saying 
when He spoke of God, but He is not God of the dead, 
but of the living. Dead, indeed, to us after the fashion 
of human speech, living after God’s fashion. But wher¬ 
ever our dead are, they, too, are of the Fellowship. 

Fellowship or Communion, then, is an actual relation¬ 
ship between the visible and the invisible, the past and 
the present, the earth living and the earth dead. 

But Saints, of what sort are they ? 

The common definition is that they are the holy ones, 
and the popular use of the term is concerning those who 
are, at least humanly speaking, perfect. But this shuts 
out a very large part of mankind, and moreover it has no 
scriptural authority. The epistles were usually addressed 
to the “ Saints,” many of whom, according to those 
same epistles, lacked some very essentials of holiness. 

The Saints are not the holy ones only, but the truth 
seekers whose ultimate is holiness. The true Saints are 
those who are striving to realize their Sonship, and to 
stand in the Presence, the Holy of Holies of the uni¬ 
verse. This enlarges the circle as it deepens and widens 
the meaning of the Communion of Saints. Many are 
the Saints who know it not. 

So far we have tried to set forth not an exact state- 


172 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


ment, which seems beyond human powers of compre¬ 
hension, but an approximation of the meaning of this 
article of the Creed in the teaching of the Christian 
Church. We now turn to the physical and intellectual 
world for a rational analogy before applying the faith to 
the fact. 

There is a natural Communion of Saints, not unlike 
the spiritual doctrine. Positive and material as this 
generation is, confident and arrogant perhaps of its own 
powers, it still tacitly acknowledges a communion with 
the past, without which the accomplishment of the pres¬ 
ent would have been an impossible dream. 

The philosopher who holds no communion with the 
past is not a philosopher ; if he uses not the legacy of 
Plato or Aristotle he yields no usury to his own age. 

The most brilliant achievements of modern scholar¬ 
ship are, after all, but superstructures built upon the 
foundations laid long ago by those whose names we 
know not. Ask the Thinker who uplifts his age, who it 
was that anointed him to see with clearer vision, how 
much of his knowledge is self-derived, how much he 
owes to the dead ? 

And science, whose matchless achievements pale only 
before the dazzling possibilities which lie before her 
votaries, what are the contents of her vast treasure- 
house but a debt we owe to those long dead ! There is 
no application or invention but that draws upon the 
past for its perfection. The beacon lights are never 
quenched, but handed on from dying hands to living 
comrades. The Present is the Past. Our heritage in 
the natural world of science, literature, and art is the 
communion of natural saints, of seekers after the high- 


CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALISM—COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 173 

est expression of truth to which their several generations 
can reach. We are, as children of time, apart from our 
spiritual inheritance, nearer our ideal of perfection be¬ 
cause we are living day by day in a communion of saints. 

It is this very fellowship, so far as the past is con¬ 
cerned, with the Invisible, the Dead, that we mean to 
express when we say we believe in the spiritual Commu¬ 
nion of Saints. We declare our belief in the common 
union of all who in the past have struggled to work out 
the God idea in man. I believe that they are, by virtue 
of the common Brotherhood of struggle, a part of my 
effort toward realizing my Sonship. Their accomplish¬ 
ment, so far as I will use it, is my heritage. I am in 
them, and they in me, working together to realize the 
whole destiny of man. 

According to our doctrine, the Holy Catholic Church 
is the organism of this Communion. It is a fellowship 
of effort on the part of those (called holy because of 
their holy seeking) who are striving to work out the 
problem set by God for man, when He made him in His 
own image, and placed him in this universe. Some 
have reached the limit of earth accomplishment and 
have gone, after their kind, elsewhere, probably still 
achieving as new surroundings draw out new capacities 
of energy. Some are still in the earth environment. 
But the two are integral parts of the One Family, whose 
Head is the Only Son. We do not know how the dead 
work. We only feel that somehow they must be occupied. 
We do know that we work by the free use of our her¬ 
itage from them. That we accomplish because they 
have accomplished, and that in this sense there is a 
vital communion between the living and the dead that 


174 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


could not be broken without stunting and stultifying 
human nature as we find it. 

This article is a protest, it will be seen further, against 
dropping one’s dead out of sight because, under divine 
orders, they have been transferred to another part of the 
field. 

This is a real temptation and a menace to our faith in 
God’s Fatherhood. 

Christian hope and Christian faith, to say nothing of 
Christian history, bid us stand undismayed beside the 
death-bed. But mostly we stand there benumbed and 
appalled. In spite of the clear, unerring ring of joy 
that characterizes the Burial Service, we clothe ourselves 
in weeds and nurse a certain Sadducean infidelity. 
Why? 

Is it not because we are afraid to grasp in its entirety 
our heritage of eternal life here and now, having been 
mistaught that life ends, so far as our communion with 
God and each other goes, at the grave? This is ad¬ 
visedly said. To-day some one I know is named in my 
prayers. To-morrow shall I leave out the name? 
Why ? Because in the mean time he has been removed 
to another room. My love is the same for him there as 
here. Shall I not commune with Our Father about 
His son and my brother ? 

Men do it whether it be orthodox or not. They do it 
as an appeal from men, who know so little, to God, who 
knows so much. The Catholic Church has always 
held or allowed this in one shape or another. 

The declaration affirms that we are not alone, even 
with God, isolated from the “ sacramental host of God’s 
elect,” but that we have a vital connection both with 


CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALISM—COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 1?5 


those who have entered the larger life, and with those 
who are struggling through the lower ground of the 
under world toward that life. 

We are working together, living and dead, being One 
Body, though many members, under the Headship of 
Jesus Christ, the Son of man. 

Perhaps our own beloved dead are working upon and 
influencing us directly, as we know they have worked upon 
and influenced us through their past, which is our present 
heritage. 

How may the dead he thus in touch with the living ? 

All that can be said here is but speculation upon a 
mystery. The veil between the Present and the Future 
is so thick that we cannot pierce it. Well, indeed, for 
ns that it is so. But as we dream of what our friends 
are doing in some foreign land, and argue from their 
known characteristics, so may we concerning those who 
have entered the land of Eternal Life. We do not 
know, we may only hope and believe. They may not 
know the details of our earth life. Surely this would 
dull for them the glory of the brightest heaven, as it is 
the crucifixion of Christ over and over again, who does 
know. But as God worketh still in this earthly realm, 
using many ministers to guide, direct, and influence 
under the inspiration of His Spirit, may He not be 
using our beloved as ministers to us ? 

If they are walking upright, having paid the penalty 
of their purification and beholding now the Father’s 
face, may it not be the joy of their existence to be used 
by Him on missions to those they love, although they 
themselves may not know how ? 

If they are creeping yet, in spiritual weakness and 


176 THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 

half knowledge, may it not be a part of their further 
discipline to toil and struggle with us, and as a part of 
their own purification, to be His ministers for ours ? 

The baby hands we folded on the little bosom long 
ago may now be leading us ; the dear heart whose earthly 
throbbing has long since ceased, may now be yearning 
with and over us, who sigh for what is, though we feel 
and hear it not, “ the touch of a vanished hand, the 
sound of a voice that is still.” 

The Church teaches merely the fact of the Commu¬ 
nion of Saints. It is within our reasonable right to hope 
and to believe that as a portion of the meaning of this 
faith, our dead are somehow a part of God’s energy 
working in and through us. 

The doctrine thus blends the life of this world and 
the other world into One Life, and teaches that this 
blended life of Communion is a more perfect expression 
of God’s life in man, even as the life of the sixteenth 
and nineteenth centuries blended, is a more perfect ex¬ 
pression of political and social truths than either period 
considered by itself. It contains the evolution of God’s 
ideal in man, by revealing the fact that no one is out of 
the struggle or apart from the triumph ; that there are 
not two kinds of human beings, the one here the other 
somewhere else ; but as God is one, Humanity is one, 
and wherever its members may be, is working toward 
that ideal which had its perfect expression in the Only 
Son, the Son of man. The Family of God is not per¬ 
manently divided, but its members are separated for a 
while. Each part is incomplete without the other. As 
we long for our dead, and live in them, they long for us 
and live in us. Their prayer is ever as our prayer 
“ Thy Kingdom Come.” 


CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALISM—COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 177 


We may note now the very practical way in which the 
Church seeks to emphasize this article of the faith, and 
apply it to the facts of earthly life. 

Whatever the individual may do, the Church does not 
let her glorious dead fall from the knowledge of the 
living. Her Saints days and Event-days form a splendid 
beadroll of great names, great examples, and great 
teachings. From St. Andrew to SS. Simon and Jude 
she yearly calls the roll. It is not in worship we pay, 
in relics we venerate, in doubtful miracles we dwell. It 
is in the clear atmosphere of character, the inspiration 
of ideals, the struggle of fine achievements. The saints 
of history are saints, not because some advocatus dialoli 
fails to point out weaknesses, but because, in spite of 
weaknesses and even sin, these men of earth sought to 
be, in grace as in adoption, Sons of God. We recall 
their names and deeds in order to realize our communion 
in a great fellowship of human aspiration. We exult 
that their triumphs were not selfish triumphs, but were 
ours in common with them. We are spurred by this 
cloud of witnesses to so run the race that we may add a 
wreath to the brow of man, as he presses in his many 
members toward the mark of the prize of his high 
calling. 

And yet, splendid as were the deeds and majestic the 
feasts which commemorated them, in the world of the 
ritual year, they would be but empty and barren to 
many souls, did not the Church turn aside from the seats 
of the mighty, and on one day gather up in a common 
feast of Christendom—and may we not dare hope, of all 
human kind, whether Christian by name or not, if Christ- 
like in any way their lives—the nameless saints and 
martyrs of earth. 


178 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


All Saints Day ! All Saints of all time, all sorts, 
from everywhere. 

It is a re-emphasis of the truth of the Incarnation. 
It teaches that God looks down and into every heart of 
human, and takes up into His own great Heart and makes 
a part of His purpose, every throb of Sainthood in every 
creature. It teaches of a Sainthood unrecorded in time, 
of unknown, uncounted hosts of men, women, and chil¬ 
dren, who in Christ, somehow, have helped forward the 
redemption of humanity and the glory of God. 

These are our dead. They wore no golden aureole. 
They died and made no sign. But they, too, were parts 
of the great Purpose. The footfalls of our beloved 
growing fainter as they passed out of our lives were 
even then echoing through the halls of the many man¬ 
sions. In their strivings Christ was made visible to us, 
and in every such great Day of All Saints celebration, in 
every feast of the Holy Communion, where by the out¬ 
ward symbol of a common Feast we realize the inward 
fact of a common brotherhood—we realize with the 
whole company of faithful people, with angels and arch¬ 
angels and all the hosts of God, our union with Christ, 
who is the Head. Therefore in every hour in which the 
Church lifts her triumphant confession of faith in the 
Communion of Saints we link again the living and the 
dead, the past and the present, the visible and the invisi¬ 
ble, and we have a glimpse prophetic of the Joy immor¬ 
tal that lies in Eternal Life, the knowledge of God as 
the Father of a Family, whose great heart holds all 
hearts, and in whose Presence all strayed souls will at 
last come to themselves, and know Him as He is. 


CHAPTER XII. 


THE TRIUMPH OF THE INCARNATION—FORGIVENESS OF 

SINS. 

“ I believe . . . in the Forgiveness of Sins.” 

Apostles' Creed. 

“ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the 
truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just 
to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 

1 John 1 : 8, 9. 

“ The idea that justice and love are distinct attributes of God, 
differing widely in their operation—a doctrine first propounded 
in all its rigor by Marcion—is regarded by Clement as having its 
origin in a mistaken conception of their nature. Justice and 
love are in reality one and the same attribute, or, to speak from 
the point of view which distinguishes them, God is most loving 
when He is just, and most just when He is most loving. Love 
constitutes the essential quality of God ; not the love which in 
its inferior human manifestations appears as an indulgent weak 
affection, but love in its highest sense, as that in God which 
seeks the perfection of all His creatures, and follows them with 
chastisement for the insurement of its end.” 

Professor Alex. V. G. Allen. 

All that man may hope for or desire for humanity is 
included in the previous articles of the Creed. Creation 
by a Father, Revelation of the Father’s Purpose in the 
Incarnation, the spirit of Life brooding in and over men 
with fertile powers, a communion of power and love 


180 


THE PACTS AND THE FAITH. 


with the noble and shining spirits of the past, and yet 
inan may well stand helpless and benumbed before these 
great truths, realizing and believing them, but feeling 
himself to be outside the sweep of their application be¬ 
cause he is a sinner. 

To be really convicted of sin is an appalling experi¬ 
ence unless there is some answer to the cry of the sin¬ 
ner. We may imagine man reaching this point in the 
Creed summary, and finding himself in rational agree¬ 
ment with it all, but pausing in awful realization of the 
fact that it cannot, or at least may not, include him. 

In spite of all this sublime record of Cod’s dealings 
with us, of the possibilities of the divine in us, of the 
outreachings of Cod toward us, we feel apart from it 
all. We are conscious of sin. We know that we have 
failed to realize our purpose as Children of Cod. We 
are in the far country. About us are the swine, our 
companions. Before us the husks, our earthly wages, 
upon which in vain we seek to satisfy the hunger of our 
souls. 

Some do not think as deeply as this. Some prodigals 
do not recognize that they are prodigals. They have 
not wasted all their goods. They sit at the best places, 
and are clad in purple and fine linen. But even these 
have moments of dissatisfaction. Confections choke 
quite as often as husks. 

The Christian Faith has something to say concerning 
this Fact of life in the sentence “ I believe in the For¬ 
giveness of Sins.” 

It is the first statement of the Creed having a connec¬ 
tion with man’s actual present condition on earth in 
relation to God his father. It is significant in that 


TRIUMPH OF INCARNATION—FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 181 


it seems to show that sin, while taken into account by 
God, is not a part of the endowment of humanity. It 
came in to the creation, but it came as alien, not as 
natural-born. 

Sin (to which we will presently seek to give a definition) 
is the present state of man. But it is such an unnatural 
state, such a frightful anomaly in the universe of the 
God-Father, that the Church cannot state the fact with¬ 
out coupling it with its antidote. “ I believe in sin” is 
a hopeless and deadly declaration. Christ in His Church 
will permit no such monstrosity to stand alone. I be¬ 
lieve in the Forgiveness of Sin is a statement of another 
sort. The Creed states ultimate facts of the divine and 
human life. Sin is not an ultimate fact. Forgiveness 
is. The lesser fact is included in the larger Faith. 

We must note here that sin has underlain the expres¬ 
sion of all human life. It is at the basis of the noblest 
fiction, at the heart of the finest poetr} T . It sobs through 
the sublimest strains of music. The drama, long before 
Christ, drew its unparalleled beauty and pathos from 
the suffering incident to a haughty insolence to, and dis¬ 
obedience of, the gods. Go where we will sin confronts 
us. The Prodigal is the child of all nations. 

His story is the epic of humanity. 

All religions have the fact, and usually the conscious¬ 
ness of sin, as the rationale of their formal existence. 
It is because man has departed from God that he feels 
he must somehow be bound back to God. 

What is this Sin in principle ? It has many forms, 
but underneath these is a principle which is the moving 
spring of all. 

Sin is the violation of God’s law. Not an arbitrary 


182 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


law, like those of an earthly legislature, but a traversing 
of the continuous and orderly working of the supreme 
mind. It is the treason of a man to his purpose in the 
universe. It is a denial that he is a child of God with 
duties and responsibilities. It is a violation of the 
higher law of a man’s being, whereby only, the image of 
God may be developed in him. It is a staining, clip¬ 
ping, dulling of that image instead of keeping it bright 
and bringing it out clearly. 

Whatever the peculiar form of sin—slander, lying, 
adultery, murder, theft—these are but the symbols and 
manifestations of the broken bowl of God’s life in us, of 
a relationship defied, a progress delayed, a departure of 
man from His Father’s House and his own place, to an¬ 
other country. 

A diseased child is a violation of the law of God’s life 
in man. A blasted or withered tree is another. A cal¬ 
loused soul still another. 

Punishment follows sin, for sin cannot be isolated. 
It has inevitable results. Sometimes we see these re¬ 
sults, and sometimes we do not. Sometimes they follow 
immediately upon sin, sometimes after long periods. 
But doubt of their happening in due and natural course 
there cannot be. 

There is a better and more exact word than punish¬ 
ment, however, and that is Retribution. Our popular 
use of the former word leads us to include in it a quality 
of arbitrariness. We associate penalty with a fixture in 
days, weeks, months, or years. But there is nothing 
arbitrary in God’s retribution or paying back. Exactly 
speaking, God does not punish at all. Retribution is 
involved in sin. It is the eternal law of cause and 


TRIUMPH OF INCARNATION—FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 183 


effect. Ten years in the penitentiary is not a natural 
punishment for any sin whatsoever. To hurt one’s 
hand by thrusting it into the fire is a natural retribution. 

As a man sows, so shall he also reap, is the law of ret¬ 
ribution, under the law of developing life in a continu¬ 
ous creation. Is this cruel, or arbitrary, or unjust ? 

Retribution is a truth of science. It is not, as it is 
often called by shallow dec! aimers who boast themselves 
agnostics, it is not a superstition, nor an invention of 
priestcraft, nor a morbid illusion of sentiment. It is an 
inevitable law of the physical universe. If one violates 
a law of the physical body, one suffers the penalty of 
that breakage, whether penalty seems to be a teaching 
of science or not. 

Retribution is further a truth of the social organism. 
It is not as perfect an expression here as in the physical 
universe, because it is only a human apprehension applic¬ 
ative of a divine fact. The social law must and does 
deal in a retributive way with outlaws. What is defined 
as breakage and what are assigned as penalties of break¬ 
age, is another question to be settled by legislatures and 
courts of law. 

In nature God deals directly with the outlaw. The 
smart follows the fire. In human society legislatures 
express in laws what they conceive to be the will of the 
people in relation to each other. The violation of these 
laws is a sin against the corporate life, and as such is 
punished by the corporate body. 

Retribution is to be rationally inferred therefore as a 
truth of Religion. The soul that sinneth shall die. 
When man offends against nature or against the social 
body, the breakage is merely local in its application. 


184 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


But in so far as these natural and human laws are in 
conformity with the higher laws of eternal well being, 
the breaking of them involves something more than 
earthly and human punishment. They are departures 
from the original purpose of the creation. The retribu¬ 
tion that follows is just as certain in spiritual terms as 
the retribution of nature, and far more certain and 
meet than any arbitrary punishment by man. 

Broken law is thus met by Punishment on all sides, 
and men are always breaking laws. What is man’s re¬ 
source when he comes to the knowledge that he is a law 
breaker, when the spirit of life in him convicts him of 
sin ? 

It is the proud (although not accurate) boast of the 
materialist that nature knows no forgiveness in the 
working of her inexorable laws. 

If God forgives therefore, according to the materialis¬ 
tic argument He is not the God of nature. 

Is this so, however ? Nature is really optimistic, and 
is forever carrying on a work of renewal and reconstruc¬ 
tion. No sooner does the cruel axe leave the incision, 
than the forces of nature are at work to heal over the 
wound to the tree. Nature heals more rapidly and 
surely than man, the hurts and diseases of the body. 
The surgeon and physician create nothing, repair noth¬ 
ing, but assist nature in the task of forgiving man’s 
sins. 

Human law knows no forgiveness. The law of the 
land embraces an axiom that ignorance of the law is no 
valid excuse for its breakage. And yet there are par¬ 
dons and ameliorations of punishment, although neces¬ 
sarily as arbitrary as penalties themselves. 


TRIUMPH OF INCARNATION—FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 185 


But nature and the social Organism are alike admin¬ 
istered under a law which upon the whole knows no for¬ 
giveness, although faint adumbrations of it are seen, as 
above, to indicate the divine will in relation to sin. 

One voice comes out of the thick darkness in which 
the sinner is enshrouded. This Jesus Christ whom we 
have been following in His Human progress until we 
have realized that somehow He is the veritable Power of 
God in the world declares Himself to be the Friend of 
sinners. He emphasizes the declaration in work and 
word. Ho one else is the friend of sinners, no thing 
else. 

Into the plan of God for humanity as interpreted by 
the word of God—a humanity destined to error—a 
humanity impossible of creation unless at the same 
time capable of a free choice involving wrong choice, a 
humanity steeped in the sorrowful consequences of ex¬ 
erting free choice in evil ways, enters the Only Son, 
taking upon Himself the flesh of humanity, with His ear 
attuned to its sobbing cries, and not unmindful of its 
wild defiances, declaring Himself to be the Friend of 
sinners. 

We know by experience as well as by the teachings of 
science and philosophy, that the wages of sin is death, 
and that this is final unless some help intervenes. 
Christianity teaches that help has intervened. Over 
against the wages of sin it proclaims a free gift of God, 
through one who is the Friend of sinners. Eternal Life is 
ours through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

This is the forgiveness of sins in broad outline, the 
swallowing up of death in Life. 

What is forgiveness in detail ? 


186 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


We say, and accurately from every point of view, that 
God retributes back, that every sin bears its penalty, 
that as a man soweth so shall he also reap. 

If God is one and the same throughout His universe, 
this law of retribution must hold good. Where, then, 
is the sinner’s hope ? 

Forgiveness cannot be release from just retribution. 
First, on account of God’s will, which is God’s law. 
He cannot make up with His Own, by breaking His 
own laws and disturbing the course of His continuous 
creation. 

Second, on account of the sinner himself. The sinner 
when truly repentant (which is the only condition we 
can consider, God will force no one) will desire to purge 
himself.* The man who finally attains the knowledge 
of God, which is Eternal Life, must know that Right is 
everywhere done in the universe so far as he is con¬ 
cerned, or else he is not yet in his own place. The sin¬ 
ner cannot stand in the Presence with stains upon his 
soul which he may wash out. If God in His love could 
permit it, he himself would be ashamed. When men 
see themselves, they will be glad that retribution is possi¬ 
ble at any cost. 

If retribution is probable on such strong grounds, in 
what does the forgiveness of God through Christ con¬ 
sist ? Is it, after all, a mockery of humanity ? Indeed, 
as some one has profoundly said, the great mystery is 
not punishment of sin, but forgiveness. 

An embezzler steals a large sum of money and wastes 
it. His friends rally around him and pay the money. 


* Vide p. 124. 


TRIUMPH OP INCARNATION—FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 187 


He is sincerely sorry for his crime. His friends grieve. 
The bank directors even are softened. But there is a 
law above sorrow, grief and remorse, which has been 
violated. The embezzler is forgiven by all concerned, 
but the law does not forgive, and he must go to prison 
and work out his sentence. He is promised his old 
position of trust when his term expires, and is made to 
know that the past shall never be brought up against 
him. But the cell of his retribution gapes for him, and 
he must work out his repentance by reparation, that he 
may, so far as possible, heal over the wound he has made 
in the social organism. 

This is a faint illustration of forgiveness and retribu¬ 
tion going hand in hand. 

A child tells a falsehood, or steals. The father’s heart 
grieves and forgives, but for the child’s sake punishes. 

Now the real wage of sin is death. Unless that ulti¬ 
mate wage be remitted there is no hope. But if Christ 
speaks true this ultimate wage has been remitted. 
Eternal Life lies within the reach of humanity, otherwise 
dead in trespasses and sins. 

What is this death ? Not the separation of soul and 
body, which is a natural process of the flesh. Death is 
the opposite of Eternal Life, which is the knowledge of 
God. Therefore the ultimate penalty of sin is to not 
know God. It is isolation. The ‘ ‘ withheld completion 
of life,” because we are not worthy to complete. 

From this state, mankind, blundering on idly, wick¬ 
edly, ignorantly, is redeemed. But the redemption in¬ 
volves a process of salvation which the individual must 
work out—how truly the Apostle phrases it—“ with fear 
and trembling.” 


188 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


The embezzler in the treasures of life is redeemed 
back, by divine forgiveness, into Eternal Life, but the 
way back embraces retribution. 

Forgiveness is, then, our assurance that in spite of our 
disobedience, because we are sons, God covers over the 
wicked rebellion and receives us into relations with 
Himself. 

The sinner now knows why Jesus laid such stress upon 
His supreme revelation of God as a Father. Forgive¬ 
ness is redemption back into the Family of God. 

Forgiveness involves two distinct things or processes. 
Man’s part lies in coming to himself and going back to 
his Father’s house. The one is incomplete without the 
other. To come to himself and to abide in the far coun¬ 
try would not have been repentance, but remorse. He 
goes back along the painful road, hopeful only that a 
place will be found for him at least among the servants. 
He knows himself unworthy of sonship because he has 
betrayed that trust. But back somehow within the 
radius of the Father’s kindly care he must get. 

God’s part is to go out to meet man. But this is not 
accomplished by breaking His own law. He will meet 
him a great way off from home, but not all the way. 
The son must pay his penalty of rags and weariness and 
hunger and thirst. He can do this remembering his 
Father’s house. Forgiveness does not transplant him 
from the swine pasture to the homestead. It assures 
him of the homestead. The swine pasture is a reality 
which he has created and from which he must be rid. 

This is why sacrifice and cost enter so largely the ex¬ 
perience of mankind. It is not God’s will, but man’s 
necessity. 


TRIUMPH OF INCARNATION—FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 189 


God cannot in justice all around avert retribution, but 
as man works himself back from the far country,* God 
gradually restores to man the knowledge of Himself. 
The clearer this knowledge becomes, the deeper is the 
joy of the son, the plainer his path before him, the 
surer he is of the Father’s welcome. 

Forgiveness of sins is the voice of God which has been 
uttered in all ages, more clearly and distinctly, and, as it 
were, with final emphasis, in Jesus the Christ. The voice 
pierces all selfish crusting, all miserable sins, all silly 
shams, all weaknesses and ignorances, forever calling, 
I am here, my child, come back ! Your place is here, 
return ! To have no sense of this forgiveness, is to hear 
no voice echoing through time summoning the soul to 
peace. It is to feel that the Past is barren of Purpose, 
the Present a hideous nightmare, the Future a thick and 
hopeless muddle. 

Forgiveness links us backward and forward with God. 
It is the triumph of the Incarnation, because it gives 
meaning to the Incarnation as applied not to one life, 
but to many. 

The Only Son, the realization of God’s ideal of His 
own image in human flesh, comes but to unite the God- 
Father and these other sons. These other sons stand 
on the brink of a gulf impassable. There is no passing 
across from their side. 

But if God be a Father, there must be a way across, 
and it must be, first, in the thought of God. It is for¬ 
giveness of sin that mends this break. So Forgiveness 
is the going forth of God, the seeking and working of 


* Vide chapter on “ Atonement,” p. 46. 


190 


THE FACTS A HD THE FAITH. 


God upon the sinner. It is the persistent love with 
which God follows us until we are swallowed up in the 
greatness of it and, ashamed as we are, yield ourselves to 
Him, because of the great love wherewith He hath loved 
us. 

The manifestation of the love that will take no de¬ 
nial, yield to no wilfulness, nor grow impatient at long 
delays, is Jesus Christ our Lord. Is it not foreshad¬ 
owed in the story of Eden, when, quick upon man’s sin 
and consequent shame, God clothed him with the skins 
of animals, covering over his own poor attempt at a 
modus vivendi, and so establishing from the moment of 
his fall new relations, though sadder ones, with His 
child ? 

But let this all be so. There is a question which men 
are never tired of asking, in jest sometimes, in mocking 
flippancy, in honest doubt, in serious seeking after truth, 
Why is evil in the world at all ? 

The problem of evil is an old one, and an ever new one. 

It may be stated in these terms. God made man. 
He made him capable of sinning, therefore He made 
him capable of introducing moral evil. Can God be 
good and yet the author of such a hideous charnal house 
of sin as man has succeeded, with his divine endowment, 
in making of this world ? 

The explanation of this is not simple, but we may see 
far enough into it to accept the fact of sin in God’s 
world as neither irrational nor non-natural. Why could 
not man have been created perfect without the inclina¬ 
tion to sin ? For through man, God’s child, evil has 
entered and vitiated the progress of the human race 
toward its destiny. 


TRIUMPH OF INCARNATION-—FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 191 


Either God is not good in this or He could not help 
Himself. 

This may seem to the devout an irreverent statement, 
hut it is a true one. God could not help Himself, creat¬ 
ing such an one as He did, and breathing into him a 
breath of His own divine life. That creation has an 
equal power to go right or wrong. Evil became a poten¬ 
tial factor of the universe when man became a living 
soul. 

Let us consider this. It is an old story to the theo¬ 
logian, but may have some suggestion of novelty to the 
average man who recites his Creed and wants to know 
what it all means. 

When God created man He breathed into him the 
breath of life, and man became a living soul. God’s 
life in man, therefore, is not like His life in a dog or a 
rose. It is like His own life to the extent that it is 
truly supernatural, above and beyond, and capable of 
freely moving upon nature. It can traverse the laws of 
the universe. The miracle worker of Nazareth was not 
alone, but a type of many who know God less perfectly 
than He. 

God could have made automata, but in the creation 
of moral agents, the same liberty of action and inception 
of thought, necessary to the upward development, in¬ 
volves the liberty of breaking away, to an extent, from 
the divine order, and violating the law, which, unbroken, 
would bring man without wounds or retrogression to his 
destiny. 

If there were no difference between man’s life and a 
dog’s life there would be no problem of evil or of any¬ 
thing else. The conditions that make the problem are 


192 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


the conditions that differentiate a man from a dog. If 
man has not the free choice of evil he has not the capac¬ 
ity for good. He may be virtuous, but his virtue has 
no more moral quality than the chemical properties of 
water. 

God’s children must be His children from loving 
choice, not because of iron laws which turn out children 
as a lathe turns out scroll work—all of a pattern. The 
perfection of machinery is physical, involuntary, so to 
speak. The perfection of humanity is by choice, effort, 
sacrifice, struggle into realization. If Jesus had not 
been tempted, and subject to like temptations as we, He 
would not have been an example. In the creation, God 
made men, not machines. The result of endowing 
human flesh with divine life has been, and must have 
been, that the flesh would often drag the life through 
the mire. This has been human history. Evil seems 
to be in humanity as bacilli are in the air and water, 
necessitating only certain conditions to bring it into 
active life. The result of it all is sin, and sinners 
abound. 

But is there nothing over against this awful fact in 
the economy of God’s universe ? We have seen that 
nature struggles to save men from the result of their 
physical excesses or shortcomings. 

Are there any foreshadowings of God’s purpose, how¬ 
ever incomplete, to lead us to believe in the ultimate 
relief of the universe from this burden of sin, and the 
forgiveness of the sinner ? 

The doctrine of the Forgiveness of Sins from the foun¬ 
dation of the world and the birth of man, is the only ra¬ 
tional relief of the mind in viewing the problem of evil. 


TRIUMPH OF INCARNATION—FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 193 


Much of our popular theology looks upon the Creation 
as a failure,, Bethlehem an afterthought, Calvary an 
apologetic patching up a divine mistake. And yet, the 
phraseology of popular theology seems to me to be a 
sincere groping after and a faint foreshadowing of the 
truth, which may be dimly apprehended in the words of 
St. John, “ The Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world.”* 

The Incarnation was a part of the divine plan in crea¬ 
tion. Bethlehem was not a second thought. Calvary 
was not a contrivance. What Christ has been He was to 
have been. The Creation is an incomplete thing with¬ 
out the Incarnation, which involves the bringing back of 
all souls to God, in the forgiveness of sins. Man is in¬ 
deed a poor, tossed, purposeless atom unless the second 
Adam gives him a rationale in the universe. 

The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is a 
splendid figure, but the meaning is deep, sweet, and 
comforting.- 

God knows that this creature will try to have his own 
wilful way, break the laws made for him, wander in far 
countries—this is part of his endowment, that he may do 
as he will. Man’s possible sin is a part of the initial 
energy of his creation. 

The Lamb slain, however, is another part. The breath 
of God’s life in man is not only potent to disobey, but 
to obey, and in the hour of His creation, the Life of God 
begins its work within the man, finally overcoming the 
evil he will do. 

The Forgiveness of Sins is not a late gift of God to 


* Rev. 13 :8; vide also 1 Pet. 1:19, 20. 


194 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


His creation. It was more clearly revealed in the ful¬ 
ness of times, when the Only Son was born, but it was 
always involved in the creation of a being who could 
choose to sin, that one day he would choose not to sin, 
because of the Love that is the fulfilling of the Law, the 
law of Father and child. 

Jesus, in His perfect manifestation of God, was God’s 
expression in human terms of the Forgiveness of Sins, 
and therefore when we pray, we say, for Jesus Christ, 
His Sake. Amen. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


PERSISTENCE OP IDENTITY—RESURRECTION OF THE 

BODY. 

“ I believe ... in the Resurrection of the Body.” 

Apostles ’ Creed. 

“ It is so wn a natural body ; it is raised a spiritual body. There 
is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.” “ Flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, neither doth corrup¬ 
tion inherit incorruption.” 1 Cor. 15 : 44, 50. 

“ The seed appears to be hopelessly disintegrated; but it 
pleases God to re-embody the life which in germ existed in it, 
and that after no capricious fashion. An invariable law connects 
the seed sown with the springing plant; and although science 
may be unable to inform us why, the grain of wheat produces 
wheat and the grain of barley barley. So the body which a man 
will wear hereafter will be ‘ his own body ’—by no means on 
account of component particles or of similar configuration, but 
because it is the only one which could issue out of that aggre¬ 
gate of faculties and relations called now his body, so employed 
as he has employed it.” Canon Mason. 

The fact of resurrection from the dead, as such, has 
been already discussed in our argument for the resurrec¬ 
tion of Christ on the third day after His crucifixion.* 
Our faith is grounded in this. If He, having died to 
the earthly environment, rose to another form of exist- 


* Chap. VI. 


196 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


ence, there is no rational obstacle in the way of believing 
in a like resurrection of all men. The Scriptures teach 
Him to have been the firstfruits of the ripe harvest of 
humanity. 

But there is a difference between the historical resur¬ 
rection of Jesus Christ, the Only Son, and the potential 
resurrection of other sons of God, which must be taken 
into account. He saw not the corruption of the grave. 
Whatever change is effected in the transformation of the 
natural into the spiritual body, or the evolution of the 
one from the other, was not accompanied in His case by 
that scattering, absorption, and reabsorption of the 
atoms of the body, which inheres in the dissolution of 
all flesh as it comes under our observation. 

The mode of the spiritual body’s existence is a mystery 
fully as deep, as the mode of the natural body’s creation. 

In Christ’s resurrection, we saw Him emerging from 
the body of flesh into the body of spirit, with all the 
marks of the former that characterized His human mani¬ 
festation, yet in possession of new powers which seemed 
not to have been attributes of His pre-resurrection 
state. 

His was a unique personality, as we have already dis¬ 
covered, subject to natural laws, yet transcending them. 
His power over nature was demonstrated in what seems 
to us to have been a quickening of its processes rather 
than their subversion. He who has the perfect secret 
of life directs the workings of the Life Spirit as the im¬ 
perfect man cannot. He said to the impotent man, 
“ Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.”* 


* Matt. 9 : 6, 


PERSISTENCE OP IDENTITY—RESURRECTION OF BODY. 197 


We apply an electric battery and accomplish indirectly 
the same result. 

So in His resurrection, because He was perfectly 
adapted, Christ entered at once upon His heritage of 
life. We are not perfectly adapted, and must pass 
through the natural, perfecting process. 

We are now concerned with the mode of our own 
resurrection, the principle being illustrated in the his¬ 
torical case of Jesus of Nazareth, or if men are yet 
doubtful of that, the principle being established as a 
necessary part of the economy of God to prevent our 
falling into “ intellectual confusion.” 

The immortality of the soul has always been linked 
with a resurrection of the body in some shape or form, 
in the formulated thought of mankind. They have 
been held as complementary parts of one truth, often 
vaguely, often grotesquely, as in the embalming customs 
of the Egyptians, and in the prepared food and hunting 
weapons so often found in the graves of primitive peo¬ 
ples. The hope of, and longing for resurrection, came 
not in with Christianity, nor would it die out were 
Christianity to be blotted out as a religion. Like all 
the vital truths of the faith, as expressed in the Creed, 
the resurrection from the dead meets a fact of human 
experience. We instinctively look forward to rising 
again, somehow, after death has done its utmost with our 
bodies. The burial customs of all ages emphasize this 
outreaching of the human soul for embodiment in spirit, 
after its disembodiment in time. 

Christ brought these hopes, expectations, longings, 
and gropings of humanity to light. He so crystallized 
the idea as to make manifest in form, what had before 


198 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


been held in vague solution. He brought Life and Im¬ 
mortality to light. 

As a result of His teachings on the subject we have 
the concrete doctrine of the Creed. It is, that the time 
will come when every soul that has lived, will not only 
live again, but live in his own body as himself. As 
Christ came back from the tomb with marks that were 
distinguishable of the Christ in the flesh, so You will be 
You, and I will be I in the resurrection. It is our 
belief that no change that can come upon us in the 
process of dissolution can alter human personality. We 
believe this, not only because Christianity teaches it, but 
because any other course would be a stultification of our 
creation, an utterly irrational end to a process up to that 
point, rational and logical. 

This article is opposed to 

(a) The theory of a reincarnation into another existence, 
which, while conditioned by this, bearing its penalties, 
inheriting its capital, shall yet be unconscious of the 
earth life. This is practical annihilation. If I am bear¬ 
ing in this body the burdens of some earlier state, under¬ 
going in the earth of to-day, retribution for acts done in 
some earth of long ago, without memory or conscious 
connection with that former self, then there is not only 
no moral relation between sin and punishment, but 
there is absolutely no practical connection between the 
self of to-day and the self of yesterday. 

We believe, as Christian disciples, in the resurrection 
of self, with memory, and with the earth life as a part 
of our conscious future inheritance. 

(V) Further, this article is opposed to the theory that 
we will be swallowed up in the Life of the Great Whole, 


PERSISTENCE OF IDENTITY—RESURRECTION OF BODY. 199 


that the supreme joy and bliss of humanity is to lose its 
individuality in the larger life of God, which seems to 
me to be the apotheosis of glorified Sloth. As in so- 
called ‘ c reincarnation/’ moral accountability and respon¬ 
sibility are here lost sight of, and Eternal Sleep is sub¬ 
stituted for Eternal Life. It may be the delicious dream 
of an oyster. It can hardly be the aspiration of a man. 

(i c ) Again, this article is opposed to the impression 
which floats in some human thought, that we are to be 
vague ghosts, phantom spirits, with no proper or definite 
place, duty, or personality. The resurrection of the 
body may be hard to be understood, and difficult even of 
apprehension, but it means something. The resurrec¬ 
tion of a ghost would mean nothing. We believe that 
we ourselves shall rise in a world we shall comprehend, 
and in which we shall be known as ourselves. 

The word 4 4 Body” involves a confusion of thought, 
and sometimes brings men to a denial of the faith, be¬ 
cause it is so contrary to the apparent fact. The orig¬ 
inal word concerning the resurrection was even stronger 
—viz., the Flesh. The Nicene Creed uses neither word, 
and while evidently meaning the same thing, is by no 
means as clear in definition when it says “ the resurrec¬ 
tion of the dead.” 

Many theologians, and a larger proportion of disciples, 
believe that they believe in the literal interpretation of 
this phrase, just as they believe that the first woman was 
built up upon a rib taken from the side of the first 
man. For generations the Christian tradition has 
taught it as a literal truth, without attempting to 
reconcile it to the reason of mankind save by that device 
of hopeless exegesis, “ with God all things are possible,” 


200 


THE FACTS A HI) THE FAITH. 


The objection to a literal interpretation of the phrase 
comes from the scientific philosopher whom we have 
been consulting (in his own realm, and this is emphati¬ 
cally his own realm) as among the noblest interpreters 
of God in His world. 

The scientific philosopher says, wondering that he 
should be called upon to give utterance to such a simple 
axiomatic truth, that owing to the dissipation, moulder¬ 
ing, absorption, and reabsorption, of the particles of the 
human body, the literal resurrection of any human body 
is absolutely impossible. 

I agree with him. It is absolutely impossible. It is 
an unscientific and irrational conception. But for Chris¬ 
tian people, moreover, it is heretical. It is not only not 
a Christian doctrine, but it was condemned long ago by 
one who knew as much as we do at least, when he dis¬ 
coursed on the resurrection of the body in the fifteenth 
chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. “ Now 
this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit 
the kingdom of God.” 

It is unscientific from the observed fact. Other bodies 
have entered and become part of our bodies. Not even 
a whitening bone remains of the millions who have long 
since mouldered in the dust or been dissolved in the sea. 
The human flesh persists, as all matter seems to persist, 
but not as a whole. It persists in the grass springing 
up in the country churchyard ; in the flowers that 
bloom over countless graves ; in gases, salts ; in brutes 
that raven for their prey. There is no v/aste with God. 
Materialism has its divine message, too. But no mummy 
wrappings, no embalming fluids, can confer immortality 
upon the body as a body. The proposition is irrational. 


PERSISTENCE OE IDENTITY—RESURRECTION OE BODY. 201 


The world is full of resurrections from the dead, and in 
no case does the law of resurrection vary from that of 
the seed corn. Decay and dissolution of the old form is 
the inevitable condition of the life that proceeds from it, 
acquiring its new form from its environment. 

The proposition is unscriptural. St. Paul declares in 
answer to a question bearing upon this very point that 
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and 
points it by an analogy which seems to amply cover the 
case, “ Neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. ” 

And yet St. Paul asserts after Christ, his teacher and 
ours, and the Creed offers as the Christian belief, the 
Resurrection of the Body. 

What do we mean by the doctrine ? 

Is it the statement of a fact so mysterious that it can 
be uttered only with a sense that it is irrational, and 
the less we attempt to maintain it by argument the 
better ? Is it a metaphysical puzzle, like that of the 
Calvinistic view of the Trinity, which we do not really 
believe, but only believe we believe ? Are we, in these 
days of the Spirit's guidance into all truth, io take refuge 
in declaring that God can do all things, and leave it 
there, as people are fond of doing when they come face 
to face with an absurdity w r hich they have been mis- 
taught to be a fact of religious truth ? God forbid ! 

We must, first of all, define our terms and understand 
the meaning of the language we so freely use. 

We have had occasion to note already the figurative 
and material character of much of the language in both 
Old and New Testaments. Heaven is a place with 
gates of precious stones ; somewhere in its borders is a 
sea of glass ; trees and fruits and rivers abound. Hell is 


202 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


seething with fires that are never quenched, and hath in 
its lurid depths a gnawing worm that dieth not. 

We see these now to be the rhetorical figures of cer¬ 
tain facts. They are laden with truth, and in that sense 
are true. They are the channels for the conveyance of 
certain ideas. 

When men sought to convey an idea of St. Paul’s 
‘ 1 spiritual body” they were dealing with a fact that had 
no earthly nomenclature. St. Paul, we remember, when 
telling of his vision of the third heaven, says that he 
heard and saw things that it was “ impossible” for him 
to utter. 

The spiritual body is impossible of expression in nat¬ 
ural terms to the natural man. How shall the fact of 
the Resurrection of a man be presented then ? 

Personality is the supreme fact of manhood—person¬ 
ality in the sense that You are You and I am I, that 
each of us in himself is a unit of consciousness. We 
are endeavoring to express our belief that this personal¬ 
ity survives, that you will rise, and I will rise in the 
resurrection. 

We simply use the word Body as the earth language 
which all men understand, and which conveys a true, 
exact, and definite meaning, although it is in a figure 
we speak. 

How do we distinguish personality in this earth ? By 
its outer case and covering—its Body, in a 'word. I 
know my friends by face, voice, smile, tears, by those 
things which pertain to You as You, and which distin¬ 
guish you from others. 

To men, then, the Body is the man. The mind, 
heart, will, love, hate, have no existence for us, 


PERSISTENCE OF IDENTITY—RESURRECTION OF BODY. 203 


save as expressed in and through the human body of 
flesh. 

The resurrection of the body, then, is our only way 
of expressing this fact of our faith, that we believe in 
the Persistence of Identity. If I say, merely, that I be¬ 
lieve in a resurrection from the dead, I may mean any 
one of the half truths or whole falsehood against which 
the Creed protests. But when I say I believe in the 
resurrection of the body, that means the resurrection of 
the person who to-day is known to me only through his 
body. 

This article, therefore, holds that most comforting 
and rational truth, of which most men at one time or 
another feel a longing to be assured, that recognition 
and intercourse after death, and in the body of the resur¬ 
rection, are as certain as companionship and recognition 
on earth. It is a declaration that you and I will rise as 
ourselves, distinguishable as such, with our personal 
identity unbroken and unimpared. 

The declaration of our faith in the Resurrection 
of the Body means more, however, than risen personal 
identity. The word “ body” is used by St. Paul evi¬ 
dently to express not mere existence, but form and mode 
of existence. 

He says, which we all know, there is a natural body, 
and continues for our information, there is also a spirit¬ 
ual body. 

How is personal identity perpetuated ? 

We have seen that Christ’s risen body, while the same 
in the sense of personality, was not the same in sub¬ 
stance. The disciples seemed not to recognize Him im¬ 
mediately upon His appearances, but only after a little 


204 


THE FACTS AKD THE FAITH. 


time. The mistake of Mary thinking He was the gar¬ 
dener, the gradual dawn of His presence upon the two 
disciples on the way to Emmaus, the slow recognition 
upon the seashore—all these are significant of the fact 
that there was a change upon Him. It may be likened 
to the change that comes over one whom we have not 
seen for a score of years. Time has touched the face, 
the eyes, and hair into an unfamiliar semblance, but 
slowly the old personality creeps out through the altered 
visage, and we know our friend. 

The appearance and disappearance of Christ was sig¬ 
nificant, if the record be true, of a new body superior to 
the laws which bound the old one. We would expect 
this in such an One as we believe Him to have been, 
just as we are not surprised that He only appeared from 
time to time after the resurrection. The spiritual body 
could appear in His case, but it could not abide in mate¬ 
rial surroundings. 

St. Paul’s explanation of this strange mystery is not 
directly in application to the spiritual body of Christ, 
but is true of it. There is a natural body, and there is 
a spiritual body. It is equally possible that these bodies 
are existing coterminously, and that the natural body is 
but the image of the spiritual body to our material senses.* 

St. Paul’s argument as to the spiritual body is that 
life proceeds from death as a previous condition. The 
seed dies, corrupts, is dissolved, but the life principle 
has the power of enshrouding itself in a new body, which 
is its own body, of wheat, rye, lily, not arbitrarily by a 
special creative act, but by a law. 


* Note 13, p. 231. 


PERSISTENCE OF IDENTITY—RESURRECTION OF BODY. 205 


So the life principle in man, rising from the dissolu¬ 
tion of the old body, accretes to itself a new body condi¬ 
tioned by its new environment. It is as the butterfly 
from the chrysalis in relation. For with St. Paul the 
continuity is not in the atoms of the seed which pass 
into other forms, but in the life germ which expresses 
itself in a new form, which is still itself and can be 
nothing else. 

As in nature there are two bodies—the one actual, the 
other potential—for every seed, so in the spiritual realm, 
which interpenetrates the natural, there is a spiritual 
body for every natural body, and an inherent power of 
resurrection in the spiritual existence. The spiritual 
life is scientifically no more a mystery than the natural 
life. 

We conclude, therefore, that as the continuity of life 
is not of physical atoms, therefore the potent life germ 
that shaped these atoms into their material manifestation, 
may rationally accrete a spiritual manifestation after like 
fashion. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we 
shall also bear the image of the heavenly ; and this not 
contrary to, but in accordance with the laws of G-od, 
which we see continually in operation.* 

* “ The wheat that springs up does not contain the precise 
particles, perhaps does not contain any particles that were in the 
seed. On the other hand, there has been a continuous physical 
connection between the seed sown and the ripened grain at the 
harvest. If the seed had been annihilated and the ripe grain created , 
we could not speak of identity between the one and the other. 
But because the new particles had in their turn been succeeded 
by others that take their places, we can say, ‘ The wheat has 
come up.’ ” 

Maclear's “ Introduction to the Greed ” p. 282. 


206 


THE FACTS ANT) THE FAITH. 


As an illustration of this persistence of identity we 
may take a fact within the familiar observation of all. 

The atoms of my body are not the same, accepting the 
revelations of science, that they were thirty years ago. 
But I am the same. It is possible that I may have had 
two or three new bodies in the three decades. But I 
am conscious that I am the same. Now if the life of 
the human inheres in atoms, if memory, imagination, 
love, friendship, are the movement of molecules which 
have passed away, how shall I have recollection of, or 
connection with, the personality of my boyhood ? 

My identity inheres in myself, a power separate from 
but bound up with physical surroundings, and identified 
with for the time being my physical body—a body which 
is always undergoing changes. 

The resurrection of the body is thus the adaptation of 
the personal identity to its spiritual environment. The 
same self, however, persists “ through all the changes 
and chances of this mortal life” in its development. 

And this leads us to another phase of this truth, 
that resurrection is not mere identity, nor mere persis¬ 
tence of identity in the same body, but is an expansion 
of life. So far from a destruction or confusion of per¬ 
sonality, personality is much clearer to itself and to 
others. 

(a) The full potency of life is, in many ways, clogged 
and hampered by the fleshly body. The limitations of 
heredity, of education, of environment, defraud many a 
soul of complete expression. If one walks through the 
slums of a great city, he will see men, women, and alas ! 
children, too, in whom the image of the divine is 
bruised, filth-stained, brutalized. And yet they are 


PERSISTENCE OF IDENTITY—RESURRECTION OF BODY. 207 


human, they are the children of G-od, they are immortal 
souls. It is easy to grow rhetorical and hysterical over 
this confusion, and to say many things that will not 
hear rational examination. But what is there on earth 
for these “ little ones” in spiritual and mental swad¬ 
dling-clothes ? What shall be said of the inequalities 
of opportunity ? Are these not parts of God’s purpose ? 
And if so, can they be separated in the final working out 
of that purpose from Archbishops and Professors of 
Science ? Is there not a common ground upon which 
we all must stand as children of God ? Yet these are 
little higher than the beasts. If God be the Infinite 
Father, can He suffer one of the least of His little ones 
to perish out of His Presence, because of no fault of its 
own ? And yet every day witnesses the dissolution of 
soul and body in persons who do not know God, because 
they have never come into the light of His revelation. 
The body has stood like a thick gross veil between them 
and their Father. Shall they not, in the dropping of 
the body, stand out in the clearer knowledge when it 
shall appear, and seeing, will they not be led to seek ? 
The Resurrection of the Body is the only rational and 
logical deduction to be drawn from a contemplation 
of the submerged classes, so called, of humanity, if God 
be our Father and their Father, and Christ be the Son 
of man, and not the son of a man. For the intellect 
stunted in the womb ; for the education denied by pov¬ 
erty and beastly sins ; for the affections crippled from 
the cradle ; for the manhood and womanhood dwarfed 
by environment, we declare a Resurrection of the Body, 
in which the soul shall know itself, and finally realize 
itself in the Presence of its Father and its God. 


208 


THE FACTS AHD THE FAITH. 


( b ) We need not rake the gutters to find lives that are 
incomplete in this world, however. Humanity is for¬ 
ever in a state of unrest, however far on its course it 
may have journeyed. Intellectual and spiritual knowl¬ 
edge are spurs, not couches of repose. There are 
thoughts we cannot express which we know must have 
expression, visions of heights unclimbed, which we know 
are somehow accessible. The risen life is the power of 
attainment. There are lives cut off at the moment of 
achievement, stores of high capacities, made useless by a 
chance wind or a fitful fever. Can God afford to lose 
out of His universe the accumulated treasures of human 
acquirement ? If so, were it worth while ? 

The Resurrection of the Body is a sufficient answer to 
this natural cry of the human. Nothing is lost that is 
of the truth. The world’s noblemen in letters, in 
science, in art, with whom we hold partial converse now 
through books and canvas and song, will in the resurrec¬ 
tion be, actually to us, at first hand, what we but partially 
received from them through their works. The life of 
expansion and enlargement which we are promised in the 
Resurrection of the Body will be to this life, as the intel¬ 
lect of Homer and Shakespeare to the printed pages of 
the “ Iliad” or “ Hamlet.” 

(c) Recognition of each other in that spiritual world 
follows necessarily upon the expansion of existence. 
The Sadducean question put to our Lord, as to “ whose 
wife shall she be in the resurrection,” was not entirely 
sceptical or mocking, perhaps. It is a question that, 
however crudely expressed, lies close to the heart of 
humanity. Our Lord’s answer, there is “ neither mar¬ 
riage nor giving in marriage,” did not infer an absence 


PERSISTENCE OF IDENTITY—RESURRECTION OF BODY. 209 


of relationship, but a difference of state. In the line of 
the teaching of our Lord, and of His infrequent revela¬ 
tions of the other world, we are assured of but one thing, 
that we shall know each other, and that the knowledge 
and consequent intercourse will be satisfactory and com¬ 
plete. We know that in our present earthly relations 
the closest ties are not always what are esteemed to be 
natural ties. We know that we often hide our real 
selves under a fleshly mask. The body life often pre¬ 
vents real recognition. We are often deceived and mis¬ 
led. The treasures of our heart are poured out to those 
who make no response. We ourselves shrink, perhaps, 
from commendations that we know we are not worthy 
to receive, and as often quiver painfully under miscon¬ 
structions we do not deserve. 

Men know us, and we know them only “in part.” 
The Resurrection of the Body, because the earth mask 
falls with the dissolution of the earth atoms, will re¬ 
veal us and others as we and they are. It will be 
instinctive recognition, in which no mistake can be 
made, a sixth divine sense, perhaps, of which we 
have a faint hint in the shiver of joy or repulsion 
which comes over us upon a first introduction to 
strangers in this world. 

“ God sees us now as whole, we see each other only in 
part,” says a modern novelist. And we shall in the 
Resurrection of the Body also see others “ as a whole.” 
It brings a pang to many hearts, doubtless. We do not 
wish to be known. But one day we will. One day, 
having gone to our own place, nothing will satisfy us 
but to be known for what we really are. The whole 
man will desire to stand out in the light of the Eternal 


210 


THE FACTS AFTD THE FAITH. 


Judgment, and take bis own corner in that one of the 
many mansions he is fit for. 

And then, one day, when, only God knoweth, waking 
up after His likeness, we will be satisfied with it; glad 
to be, not to seem. 

The Resurrection of the Body in its application to 
human development is the crystallization of that dream 
of immortality which has lain always at the heart of 
humanity. It is the assurance of faith that we are not 
cut off in our development and bundled away in the 
earth to feed other lives and to lose our own. It is the 
definite proclamation of the Creed of Christianity, not 
as a detached truth, but as articulated with all that pre¬ 
cedes it, that we look not for the last time upon our 
dead as we close the coffin-lid, only for the last time 
imperfectly. 

To-day we are in the darkness save for this faith in 
the Resurrection of the Body. The earth struggle has 
often killed love, the earth competition has broken 
many ties, earth sham has dug many pits of silence, 
earth pain has filled many souls with bitterness, and the 
grave has swallowed up many joys. 

Please God, this is not all. The world’s Cross does 
not hold, but is denuded of the Christ, and Him we 
know to be the way over which the lost lives will pass 
from the darkness to the light, and be found again and. 
clasped to waiting hearts in the Resurrection of Life. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


ETERNAL LIFE—THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 

“ I believe ... in the Life Everlasting.” 

Apostles' Greed. 

“ And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” 

St. John 17 : 3. 

“ We complete our Creed, therefore, by declaring that we be¬ 
lieve in the Life Eternal; that men made in the image of God, 
and made for God, will in due time enter into the life of God.” 

Bishop Westcott. 

Every principal phase of the soul’s coming forth 
from God has now been discussed. Every article of the 
faith has been shown to have its root in the facts of 
human life, of a human life having its source in God, 
and so vitally and necessarily connected with God. We 
may call attention again here to the often overlooked 
fact, that the Creed is not set forth as concerning the 
Son of Man alone, but, as He is the Head of all human¬ 
ity, as concerning the sons of men. The course of Jesus 
of Nazareth from Bethlehem to Olivet is the course of 
the human soul. The extension of the Incarnation in 
the Church, through the Spirit, is the drawing up of 
humanity into the divine. The process of God’s crea¬ 
tive purpose in man, has been traced, step by step, in the 


212 


THE TACTS AND THE FAITH. 


manifestation of the Only Son, as Son of Man under 
human limitations on His earthly journey. 

The truth dwelt upon in the previous chapter was 
that of the ultimate persistence of personal identity, the 
transformation of every soul into its heavenly image, 
after it is through with its earthly image. The cer¬ 
tainty, by analogy of all other revelations of God in 
Christ and in nature, that every man shall rise in his 
own body— i.e., as himself and no other. 

The final teaching of the Creed, as expressed in the 
words, “ I believe in the Life Everlasting/’ is a summing 
up of the whole matter of human life on earth as God’s 
work, and a further illumination of the phrase the 
“ Resurrection of the Body.” 

We shall rise again, to what ? 

The Apostles’ Creed says to the Life Everlasting, the 
Nicean enlarges a bit in the phrase, the “ Life of the 
world to come.” They are one and the same thing. 

Whatever may be the state or quality of this Life, 
it must be the Life in which Christ now dwells. His 
glorified body is still a human body, in the same sense 
that ours will be. He dignified humanity, this Only 
Son, by clothing Himself in its garb. He is our Head 
and we are members of His body. What He is, we are, 
in a sense, and where He is, there we must some time 
be. The Ascension taught us that the destiny of man 
was withdrawal into the spiritual world. After our own 
kind therefore His Eternal Life is our Eternal Life, and 
the resurrection of the body is the resurrection to that 
life which He now enjoys. 

We must note in our attempt at an apprehension 
of this article of the Creed, that the Life Everlasting, 


ETERNAL LIFE—THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 213 


our destiny, does not, primarily or necessarily at all, refer 
to duration of time. In the chapter on the descent into 
Hell, I set forth how the Revised New Testament marks 
this important distinction, by altering the translation of 
the Greek word aiooviov from everlasting to eternal. 
The same Greek word is the “ everlasting” of the Apos¬ 
tles’ Creed. 

The element of time is embraced in the word eternal, 
but only as we look at it from the human standpoint. 
With God, who is the eternal God, we do not associate 
the temporal, only the eternal, a qualitative and not a 
quantitative term. We rise from the dissolution of tem¬ 
poral life to the Life Eternal. 

The distinction here made between duration and qual¬ 
ity is not a whimsical theory. When we declare that 
Eternal Life is not what we mean by the expression ever¬ 
lasting life, we are adopting the exact language of Our 
Lord and one at least of His apostles. 

In the great prayer contained in the seventeenth chap¬ 
ter of St. John’s Gospel the Son explains,* “ And this 
is life eternal, that they may know Thee the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” 

The beloved disciple proclaims,! “ For the life was 
manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and 
show unto you that eternal life , ivhich was with the 
Father , and was manifested unto us.” Again the same 
witness, | “ And we know that the Son of God is come, 
and hath given to us an understanding, that we may 
know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, 
even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, 
and eternal life.” 

* St. John 17 : 3. f 1 John 1:2. t 1 John 5 : 20. 


214 


THE PACTS AND THE FAITH. 


In the collect for Peace in the office of Morning 
Prayer, the same interpretation is set forth, “ 0 God 
. . . in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life.” 

There is no ambiguity here. Eternal Life is the 
knowledge of God. “ We complete our Creed therefore 
by declaring that we believe in the Life Eternal ; that 
man made in the image of God, and made for God, will 
in due time enter into the Life of God.”* 

We infer therefore that Eternal Life is a present 
possession not to be waited for, but to be entered upon. 
Even so was it explained by our Lord when He said,f 
“ He that believeth on Me hath eternal life.” Have 
not men, as a matter of fact, failed to realize their son- 
ship more perfectly here, because they have not used 
their whole heritage ? Is not the common state of 
Christian disciples one of looking forward to Eternal 
Life after death, instead of entering upon its glories 
now ? 

But alas ! no man, save Jesus only, has ever per¬ 
fectly held this knowledge. We know that. It is a 
possession which is developing, increasing, enlarging 
always. The knowledge of God which we on earth 
may have, is not a full comprehension, but an apprehen¬ 
sion involving effort. Even Jesus of Nazareth was for 
a time without the full knowledge, for He “increased 
in knowledge and wisdom and in favor with God and 
man.” 

The result of this inference is to strike a well-deserved 
blow at that immoral (if in most cases honestly believed) 
religious teaching, which implies that our Christian 

* Westcott’s The Historic Faith, p. 143. f St. John 6 : 43. 


ETERNAL LIFE—THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 215 


faith and hope lies in exchanging this world’s goods for 
the other world’s joys. The religion of a good many 
people, if we are to believe their acts and words, con¬ 
sists in a fearful shuddering from the punishments of 
hell and a selfish seeking for the rewards of heaven. 
Many a man doubtless finds God to be a Father through 
the fears of torment, but God surely would rather win 
His children through the love that casts out fear, than 
through the fear that frightens the sinner into obedience. 

If we can see that Eternal Life is here and now, we 
may be led to that vital conception of life which seeks 
to lay hold righteously upon the things of this life, and 
to so use them as to work through them, the spirit of 
truth ever working with human progress, as it does with 
seed progress, to the knowledge of God, which is Eternal 
Life. 

How shall man gain this knowledge in practice ? 

We must distinguish between knowing about Him and 
knowing Him. To know God is not to believe a set of 
metaphysical propositions concerning His attributes, 
but to be in communion with Him by obedience to His 
law, which is the true submission to His will. 

The Spirit has been guiding into this knowledge all 
these years. God has purpose in the creation He has 
set moving. He has indicated this purpose far enough 
for His creatures to apprehend and give their help in 
carrying it out. Every created thing is a part of this 
purpose. To know God in part is to realize that He 
has a Purpose, and to know Him completely is to carry 
out His Purpose perfectly in ourselves. This ranging 
of ourselves in harmony with Him, each in our own 
place, is Eternal Life, because it is the life of the eternal 


216 


THE PACTS AFTD TIIE FAITH. 


God perfectly expressing itself through human channels 
and in human forms, as must have been the ultimate 
intention when He said, “ Let us make man in our 
image.” 

We say the Spirit has been guiding. When Harvey 
made his discoveries of the circulation of the blood, and 
Jenner his concerning inoculation for disease, man’s 
knowledge of God as to the body life was enlarged. 
When Keppler discovered the laws that go by his name, 
when Newton generalized from the fall of an apple, 
when Watts saw the mighty latent force in a rattling 
kettle lid, when Franklin saw more than clouds and 
heard more than noise in the sky, then was the knowl¬ 
edge of God increased upon earth and among men, for 
by these uncoverings of God’s law in the natural world 
men have been enabled to live more perfectly the life of 
sons in this their temporary dwelling-place. 

Every new application of God’s truth of whatever sort 
to life, is a new revelation of God. We are in the grow¬ 
ing dawn of life eternal in this age of mechanics. 

But this is only in part. The knowledge of God into 
which the Spirit has led us concerning the earth and 
the body is not all. Every man who has taught men to 
look up and not down, forward and not back ; every 
man, whether as poet, singer, artist, seer, who has re¬ 
vealed the beauty of God’s life in this world more clearly, 
has been the teacher of that beauty of holiness, which is 
the atmosphere of Eternal Life. Eternal Life is the 
complete knowledge of that which we now know in 
part, and which we but slowly apprehend. Yet Eternal 
Life is here and now, because every soul can every day 
grow in the knowledge, and live in the strength of the 


ETERNAL LIFE—THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 217 


fact that God is a Father. And every man who helps 
another to a crumb of this most precious feast, is God’s 
man doing God’s work, under whatsoever guise he labors, 
or whatsoever instrument he employs. 

Therefore to know God in practice, is on our side to 
enter upon our proper functions in His creation, to per¬ 
form the duties and offices of our life in that state where 
it has pleased Him to put us. As the ultimate of every 
soul is to go to its own place, so the right condition of 
every soul at any point in its progress is to be in its own 
place. 

But we can only perform our office and occupy our 
place “ through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

We cannot stand alone. We have the earth and our 
neighbors, and we stand together or apart in relation to 
them. But there is more than this. Even this earth 
life is not self-derived or self-completing. Looking 
within ourselves, we see weakness, indecision, “ failure 
crowning failure.” Looking without, we see confusion, 
strife, turmoil. It is only by looking upward to God 
that man can find reason and purpose in his life on 
earth. In Christ we do perceive God dealing perfectly, 
because undisturbed by rebellion with human life. In 
Him we see man living after God’s ideal. And there¬ 
fore through this example we come to a knowledge of 
God. More than this. Our knowledge of God must 
include the Incarnation as a part of His continuous crea¬ 
tion. “ Through Jesus Christ our Lord” cannot be 
narrowed into meaning merely “ by means of” either in 
the extreme vicarious sense or in the sense of His mere 
exemplarship. The Incarnation not only taught some¬ 
thing, it tvas something that forever linked God and 


218 


THE FACTS AND THE FAITH. 


mail in Him, who was the Son of man. Therefore the 
knowledge of God includes the facts and the faith of 
the whole Creed. The application of these facts to 
human lives and. the working of them over into human 
lives, this is Eternal Life. 

We may narrow our definition now to a single word. 
From the human side, Eternal Life is Character, the 
character or mind of Christ appropriated and made our 
very own. The process is never a finished one in time. 
Daily and hourly we are to receive the ideal of God in 
Christ, as our ideal. We are to manifest in our lives 
what Christ manifested in His—goodness. We are to 
seek goodness as the constant expression of our lives, 
because it is the true and only quality of those who are 
joint heirs with Christ in God. 

Character is not to be found in fear, but in love. To 
know God is not to hide from Him, but to live gladly in 
His presence. 

Is goodness, then, Eternal Life ? 

The goodness that seeks to know God’s will and do it 
must be. The human ultimate of all Christian creeds, 
theologies, and institutions is, after all, conduct issuing 
from character. Religious lives and moral lives can 
only be distinguished from each other in one way. The 
conduct of a religious man differs from the conduct of a 
merely moral man in that he perceives or believes his 
goodness to be a part of his divine heritage, and that it 
redeems him back to God his Father through the Good 
Son, who is the Father’s ideal of manhood. The moral 
man, so far as this world and these times go, is quite as 
“good” as the religious man. There are doubtless 
many bad men who claim to be religious, and good men 


ETERNAL LIFE—THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 219 


who are satisfied with being moral. The Church says to 
both, Goodness is the supreme thing, because goodness 
is an approach in time toward the knowledge of God, in 
which alone is Life. Religion is more than ‘ 4 morality 
touched with emotion,”* it is a recognition of the iden¬ 
tity of the moral life with God’s life. It is an expansion 
of the spiritual horizon. Religion conceives of man as 
having Purpose to achieve in connection with God— 
the purpose of Eternal Life. 

Human nature, therefore, considered apart from divine 
revelation, demands this knowledge of God, which is 
Eternal Life, as the satisfaction of a human need. 
Why? 

(a) There is a perpetual strife going on within the 
earthly tenement of man ; there is with us a conscious¬ 
ness of inherent inconsistency, a dull realization that, 
try as we may, we cannot express ourselves perfectly. 
We are almost always in a strait between two courses. 
One day we are on the heights, another we are in the 
depths. We feel ourselves to be uneven. 

All this cripples us. But the Life Eternal is the ex¬ 
pansion and enlargement of this Life Temporal. It is 
the vitalizing of the powers now dormant or imperfectly 
employed. 

Eor our earthly environment only approximates our 
potencies. It is competent for the physical, but not 
for the spiritual man, and the spiritual man is not always 
latent, but breaks forth in flashes of unrest. Our half 
knowledge and hints of God, breed a divine discontent. 
To enter Eternal Life we feel will be complete adapta- 


* Matthew Arnold. 


220 


THE PACTS AKD THE FAITH. 


tion to environment. Now we beat against the bars of 
the earthly cage or try short flights with clipped pinions. 
But every short flight strengthens us for the final poise 
of the resurrection from the dead, when we shall rise as 
on the wings of the morning. 

(5) The natural life is perishable in its essence, in its 
possessions, in its achievements. 

This is the burden of every prophet of the Old and 
New Testament. It is also the burden of modern scien¬ 
tific research. The natural life is a series of dissolving 
views. It abounds in broken columns, illusions, incom¬ 
pletenesses. Death, decay, corruption falls upon every¬ 
thing. The grave is the inevitable mark of every land¬ 
scape. 

No man is content with this. I do not mean that 
men mourn pettishly over it as a personal wrong, but 
they are profoundly convinced that it is not the final 
truth about themselves, their possessions, and their 
achievements. Life is the law of God’s creation, not 
death, or else He, too, has found His master in the 
gnawing worm. Through all this dissolution, corrup¬ 
tion, apparent death and endless rotting, human nature 
looks forward to see what it means, believing that it 
cannot finally mean what it seems on the surface. 

The knowledge of God, which is Eternal Life, illu¬ 
minates the darkness and brings order out of the chaos. 

Man learns to clothe his faith, that the universe has 
meaning, in one word that has been the hope and joy of 
the children of time. Immortality. 

It is a greater word than endlessness. To be immor¬ 
tal is to be taken out of time and to be lifted above its 
limitations. This is the instinctive cry of the human, 


ETERNAL LIEE—TELE LIFE EVERLASTING. 221 


which finds its answer and solace in the gift of God, 
which is Eternal Life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

The pagan’s cry was not for duration of his heaven, 
but for companionship with his gods, to live in the free 
atmosphere of fellowship with his great heroes. That 
is a fine old Btory of the heathen king who refused bap¬ 
tism, because he was told it would separate him from 
his ancestors. “ Let me abide in hell with them,” he 
cried, 44 rather than in heaven without them.” 

The Christian’s cry is to go to his own place ; to 
abide, if it please God, in the bosom of God ; to be 
with the sons of God who have achieved their sonship ; 
to be free from the hindrances that clog us here, and 
continue about our Father’s business, accomplishing 
perfectly in the union of perfect strength with perfect 
knowledge. 

The hunger of immortality is for the enlargement of 
life. It is answered in the Eternal Life of the Creed. 
Every added bit of the knowledge of our God is an en¬ 
largement of this life in us. 

We have already, in a previous chapter, argued that 
God must ultimately be justified by reason, and that, by 
their narrow conditions, and under the law of heredity, 
many souls are cramped unnaturally on earth. Ration¬ 
alism and Christianity unite in declaring that God will 
not mock Himself in these instances of mortality, but 
in the resurrection from the dead will recognize in them 
also the right of the persistence of the higher life out of 
the broken shell of the lower. 

Immortality is the world’s phrase for a larger fact 
than 44 Forever,” even the knowledge of God, which is 
Eternal Life. Therefore, as the last note of the great 


222 


THE FACTS A1TD THE FAITH. 


triumph Creed of Christianity, we repeat in jubilant 
strains, that find an echo, even though we cannot catch 
its music, in the antiphons of those bright ones who 
worship before the Throne of God, “I believe in the 
world to come, Eternal Life/’ We end the Creed as we 
begin, “ I believe in God, the Father Almighty/’ for 
the way we have been journeying brings us to the knowl¬ 
edge of Him who sent us forth from His Eternal Bosom, 
intending in our creation our Keturn, since He is the 
Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, the 
God who was, and is and is to come, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Even so come Lord Jesus. Amen. 


APPENDIX. 


Note 1 , page 2. 

“ And this feeling is not likely to be decreased, but to be in¬ 
creased by that analysis of knowledge which, while forcing him 
to agnosticism, yet continually prompts him to imagine some 
solution of the great enigma which he knows cannot be solved. 
Especially must this be so when he remembers that the very 
notions, origin, cause, and purpose are relative notions belong¬ 
ing to human thought which are probably irrelevant to the ulti¬ 
mate reality transcending human thought; and when, though 
suspecting explanation is a word without meaning, when applied 
to this ultimate reality, he yet feels compelled to think there 
must be an explanation. 

‘ ‘ But one truth must ever grow clearer—the truth that there 
is an inscrutable existence everywhere manifested to which he 
can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the 
mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are 
thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that 
he is ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from 
which all things proceed.” 

Spencer’s “ Ecclesiastical Institutions ” (last section of“ Principles 
of Sociology ”), final paragraph , p. 843. 

Note 2 , page 2. 

" It was not till the earth’s crust had so far cooled that the 
water had condensed into a fluid form ; it was not till the hith¬ 
erto dry crust of the earth had for the first time become covered 
with liquid water that the origin of the first organisms could 



224 


APPENDIX. 


take place. For all animals and all plant3, in fact all organisms, 
consist in great measure of fluid water, which combines in a 
peculiar manner with other substances and brings them into a 
semi-fluid state of aggregation. 

“We can therefore, from these general outlines of the inor¬ 
ganic history of the earth’s crust, deduce the important fact that 
at a certain definite time life had its beginning on earth, and that 
terrestrial organisms did not exist from eternity, but at a certain 
period came into existence for the first time.’’ 

Haeckel's “ History of Creation ,” Vol. I. } p. 327. 

“If we do not accept the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, 
then at this one point of the history of development we must have 
recourse to the miracle of a supernatural creation. The Creator 
must have created the first organism, or a few first organisms 
from which all others are derived, and as such He must have 
created the simplest monera or primaeval cytods, and given them 
the capability of developing further in a mechanical way. I 
leave it to each one of my readers to chocse between this idea and 
the hypothesis of spontaneous generation. To me the idea that 
the Creator should in this one point arbitrarily interfere with the 
regular process of the development of matter which in all other 
cases proceeds entirely without His interposition, seems to me to 
be just as unsatisfactory to a believing mind as to a scientific in¬ 
tellect.” Ibid.,p. 848. 

Haeckel admits one “ arbitrary interference” when he confesses 
that “ terrestrial organisms did not exist from eternity, but at a 
certain period came into existence for the first time,” as a result 
of life having a beginning at a certain definite time. If life, 
with power of organization, lay in matter in any shape whatso¬ 
ever, latent for however long a period, the “ interference” is only 
pushed a few steps further in the background. Which seems to 
be a solution as “ unsatisfactory to a scientific intellect as to a 
believing mind.” 

Note 3, page 3. 

The fact is, that at the present moment there is not a shadow 
of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take place 


APPENDIX. 


225 


or has taken place within the period during which the existence 
of life on the globe is recorded. But it need hardly be pointed 
out that the fact does not in the slightest degree interfere with 
any conclusion that may be arrived at deductively from other 
considerations that at some time or other abiogenesis must have 
taken place.” 

Huxley , “ Encyclopaedia, Britannica,” Art. “ BiogenesisVol. 
III., p. 689. 

In other words, all the facts are against the materialist, him¬ 
self being the witness, but he still thinks that his position may 
be maintained by deduction from other considerations. This is 
at variance with Professor Huxley’s demand for evidence, and 
evidence alone, upon which to base the teachings of Christianity. 

Note 4, page 8. 

“ Some people talk about the incredibility of miracles. What 
miracle can be compared to that of creation, however you view 
it ? The wonderful thing is, not that there should be an occa¬ 
sional counteraction of the ordinary movements of natural forces, 
but that these forces should have come into existence. The great 
miracle is the beginning of things. Once admit this, as the con¬ 
stitution of the human mind obliges us to do, and the question of 
miracles becomes a mere question of evidence ; antecedent objec¬ 
tion there can be none. (This, it will be observed, is Professor 
Huxley’s position, vide note 6.) The Being who made the uni¬ 
verse is necessarily free to manipulate its processes at His discre¬ 
tion ; and to doubt either His ability to do so or His willingness 
for adequate reasons is an impertinence on the part of man.” 

Malcolm MacColVs “ Christianity in Relation to Science and 
Morals,” p. 48. 

Note 5, page 15. 

“ By scientific data I do not merely mean the truths of physi¬ 
cal, mathematical or logical science, but those of moral and 
metaphysical science. For by science I understand all knowl¬ 
edge which rests upon evidence and reasoning of alike character 
to that which claims our assent to ordinary scientific proposi- 


226 


APPENDIX. 


tions. And if any one is able to make good the assertion that his 
theology rests upon valid evidence and sound reasoning, then it 
appears to me that such theology will take its place as a part of 
science. ’ ’ Huxley's “ Critiques and Addresses ,” p. 239. 

Note 6, page 25. 

“ Professor Huxley has kindly allowed me to quote the follow¬ 
ing words from a private letter addressed by him to the late Dean 
of Wells, April 27th, 1877 : ‘ I have not che slightest objection to 
offer a priori to all the propositions in the three creeds. The 
mysteries of the Church are child’s play compared with the mys¬ 
teries of nature. The doctrine of the Trinity is not more puz¬ 
zling than the necessary antinomies of physical speculation ; 
virgin procreation and resuscitation from apparent death are ordi¬ 
nary phenomena for the naturalist. It would be a great error, 
therefore, to suppose that the agnostic rejects theology because 
of its puzzles and wonders. He rejects it simply because in his 
j udgment there would be no evidence sufficient to warrant the 
theological propositions even if they related to the commonest 
and most obvious every-day propositions. ’ 

“ This last sentence seems to me so strongly opposed to the 
facts in the case that one cannot but believe that if scientific men 
generally adopt Professor Huxley’s line, the opposition to the 
Christian religion on the side of science may be greatly reduced." 

Canon Charles Gore's ‘ ‘ Incarnation of the Son of God,' ’ p. 266. 

Note 7, page 29. 

‘ ‘ But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of 
poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so 
intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost my taste 
for pictures and music. . . . This curious and lamentable loss 
of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, 
biographies, and travel (independently of any scientific facts 
which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects inter¬ 
est me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have be¬ 
come a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large 
collections of facts ; but why this should have caused the atrophy 


APPENDIX. 


227 


of that part of the brain alone on which the higher tastes depend, 
I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized 
or better constituted than mine would not, I suppose, have thus 
suffered ; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made 
a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music, at least once 
every week ; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied 
would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of 
these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious 
to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by 
enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.” 

His Son's “ Life and Letters of Charles DarwinVol /., p. 101. 

Note 8, page 36. 

“ The first fact which tended to throw doubt on the view that 
fertilization is a renewal of life was the discovery of partheno¬ 
genesis by C. Th. von Siebold and Rudolph Leuckart. When it 
was understood that under certain circumstances an egg could 
be developed into a new individual without fertilization, this 
fact itself was sufficient to show that a 4 vitalization of the germ * 
could not be the object of fertilization and could not be the cause 
of its appearance among living beings. 

4 4 But it was long before the facts of parthenogenesis were gen¬ 
erally accepted ; indeed, in some circles they are not received even 
at the present day. Only ten years ago a prominent physiolo¬ 
gist (Pfliiger) held them to be unproved, and most botanists were 
inclined to doubt their existence among plants as well as ani¬ 
mals ; for at that time parthenogenesis appeared to be wanting 
in plants and to have been erroneously believed in at an earlier 
date. Even when De Bary and Farlow had proved its undoubt¬ 
ed existence in certain ferns, and others had found it in certain 
fungi, the Basidiomycetes, and the existence of parthenogenesis 
among some plants and many animals could no longer be denied, 
the attempt was made to crush the phenomena on the Procrustean 
bed of the received conception of fertilization. The ingenious 
French savant Balbiani had previously propounded the view that 
a certain occult and hitherto undiscovered fertilization took 
place at the seat of origin of the germs in the ovaries and testes; 


228 


APPENDIX. 


this fertilization was supposed to be in addition to the regular 
recognized process, and in cases of parthenogenesis to compen¬ 
sate for it. So deeply rooted was the idea that new life could 
only arise from fertilization. 

“ Even those investigators who no longer doubted the reality 
of parthenogenesis could not immediately and completely rid 
themselves of the received view, but endeavored to make the 
new facts harmonize with the old ideas. Probably the most in¬ 
teresting attempt of the kind proceeded from Hensen, who indeed 
recognized that the views on sexual reproduction held up to that 
time had been overthrown by means of parthenogenesis, inas¬ 
much as the fundamental proposition as to sexual propagation 
had failed—viz., that one of the two sexual cells is by itself in¬ 
capable of development. He nevertheless believed that we must 
not on account of these isolated cases underestimate the fact that 
the necessity for fertilization is predominant and controls to their 
most secret depths the source of life in animals and plants.” 

Hr. August Weismann, “ Essays on Heredity and Kindred Bio¬ 
logical Problems.” Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892, Vol. II., pp. 
107, 108. 

Note 9, page 75. 

‘‘You may say that fire and worms, whether physical or spir¬ 
itual, must, in all logical fairness, be supposed to do what fire 
and worms do do—viz., destroy decayed and dead matter and 
set free its elements to enter into new organisms ; that as they 
are beneficent and purifying agents in this life, they must be sup¬ 
posed such in the future life, and that the conception of fire as 
an engine of torture is an unnatural use of that agent, and not to 
be attributed to God without blasphemy, unless you suppose 
that the suffering (like all which He inflicts) is intended to teach 
man something which he cannot learn elsewhere. . . . 

“ Rejoice that there is a fire of God, the Father, whose name is 
Love, burning forever unquenchably, to destroy out of every 
man’s heart, and out of the hearts of all nations, and off the 
physical and moral world, all which offends and makes a lie ... 

“ Because I believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, 
therefore I believe in a loving anger of His which will and must 


APPENDIX. 


229 


devour and destroy all which is decayed monstrous abortion in 
His universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet to be 
pardoned surely, if they confess themselves in the wrong and 
open their eyes to the truth. And God shall be all in all.” 

Charles Kingsley , Letters to Thomas Cooper. “ Letters and 
Memories ,” by Mrs. Kingsley , Vol. /., pp. 394, 895. 

Note 10, page 87. 

“ It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank clothed with 
many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, 
with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling 
through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately con¬ 
structed forms, so different from each other and dependent upon 
each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by 
laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, 
being Growth with reproduction ; Inheritance which is almost 
implied by reproduction ; Variability from the indirect and direct 
action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse : a Ratio 
of Increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a con¬ 
sequence to natural selection, entailing Divergence of character 
and the extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war 
of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we 
are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher 
animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life 
with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the 
Creator into a few forms or into one ; and that while this planet 
has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from 
so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most 
wonderful have been and are being evolved.” 

Charles Darwin , “ Origin of Species ” p . 474. 

Note 11, page 89. 

“ For my own part, therefore, I believe in the immortality of 
the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable 
truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonable¬ 
ness of God’s work. Such a belief, relating to regions quite in¬ 
accessible to experience, cannot of course be clothed in terms of 


230 


APPENDIX. 


definite and tangible meaning. For the experience which alone 
can give us such terms we must wait that solemn day which is 
to overtake us all. The belief can be most quickly defined by 
its negation, as the refusal to believe that this world is all. The 
Materialist holds that when you have described the whole uni¬ 
verse of phenomena of which we can become cognizant under 
the conditions of the present life, then the whole story is told. 
It seems to me, on the contrary, that the whole story is not thus 
told. I feel the omnipresence of mj^stery in such wise as to 
make it far easier for me to adopt the view of Euripides, that 
which we call death may be but the dawning of true knowledge 
and of true life. . . . The future is light for us with the radiant 
colors of hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and 
love shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of 
priests and prophets, the inspiration of the great musician, is con¬ 
firmed in the light of modern knowledge ; and as we gird our¬ 
selves up for the work of life, we may look forward to the time 
when in the truest sense the kingdoms of this world shall become 
the kingdom of Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever, 
King of kings and Lord of lords.” 

John Fiske, “ The Destiny of Man,” pp. 116-119. 

Note 12, page 92. 

“ ‘ Whatever is intelligible and can be distinctly conceived im¬ 
plies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any 
demonstration, argument or abstract reasoning a priori. ’ 

“So wrote Hume with perfect justice in his ‘Sceptical 
Doubts.’ But a miracle in the sense of a sudden and complete 
change in the customary order of nature is intelligible, can be 
distinctively conceived, implies no contradiction ; and therefore, 
according to Hume’s own showing, cannot be proved false by 
any demonstrative argument. 

" Nevertheless, in diametrical contradiction to his own princi¬ 
ples, Hume says elsewhere: ‘ It is a miracle that a dead man 
should come to life ; because that has never been observed in any 
age or country. ’ 

“ That is to say, that there is an uniform experience against 


APPENDIX. 


231 


such an event, and therefore if it occurs it is a violation of the laws 
of nature. In truth, if a dead man did come to life the fact would 
be evidenced, not that any law of nature had been violated, but 
that these laws, even when they express the results of a very 
long and uniform experience, are necessarily based on incomplete 
knowledge, and are to be held only as grounds of more or less 
justifiable expectations. 

“ To sum up the definition of a miracle as a suspension or a 
contravention of the order of nature is self-contradictory, because 
all we know of the order of nature is derived from our observa¬ 
tion of the course of events of which the so-called miracle is a 
part. On the other hand, no conceivable event, however extraor¬ 
dinary, is impossible ; and therefore, if by the term miracle we 
mean only * extremely wonderful events/ there can be no just 
ground for denying the possibility of their occurrence.” 

Professor Huxley's “ Hume ,” p. 156-158. 

Note 13, pages 105-107. 

“ Provided that there be no clear and absolute conflict with the 
known laws of nature, there is no hypothesis so improbable or 
apparently inconceivable that it may not be rendered probable, 
or even approximately certain by a sufficient number of concord¬ 
ances. In fact, the two best founded and most successful theo¬ 
ries in physical science involve the most absurd suppositions. 
Gravity is a force which appears to act between bodies through 
vacuous space ; it is in positive contradiction to the old dictum 
that nothing can act but through some medium. It is even more 
puzzling that the force acts in perfect indifference to intervening- 
obstacles. Light, in spite of its extreme velocity, shows much re¬ 
spect to matter, for it is almost instantaneously stopped by 
opaque substances, and to a considerable extent absorbed and 
deflected by transparent ones. But to gravity all media are, as 
it were, absolutely transparent, nay, non-existent; and two parti¬ 
cles at opposite points of the earth affect each other exactly as 
if the globe were not between. The action is, so far as we can 
observe, instantaneous, so that every particle of the universe is 
at every moment in separate cognizance, as it were, of the rela^ 


232 


APPENDIX. 


tive position of every other particle of the universe at the same 
moment of time. Compared with such incomprehensible condi¬ 
tions, the theory of vortices deals with commonplace realities. 
Newton’s celebrated saying, ‘ hypotheses non Jingo,’ bears the ap¬ 
pearance of irony ; and it was not without apparent grounds that 
Leibnitz and the continental philosophers charged Newton with 
reintroducing occult powers and qualities. 

“ The undulatory theory of light presents almost equal diffi¬ 
culties of conception. We are asked by physical philosophers to 
give up our prepossessions, and to believe that interstellar space , 
which seems empty , is not empty at all, but Jilled with something 
immensely more solid and elastic than steel. As Young himself 
remarked, ‘ The luminiferous ether pervading all space and pene¬ 
trating almost all substances is not only highly elastic, but absolute¬ 
ly solid.’ Herschel calculated the force which may be supposed, 
according to the undulatory theory of light, to be constantly 
exerted at each point in space, and finds it to be 1,148,000,000,000 
times the elastic force of ordinary air at the earth’s surface, so 
that the pressure of ether per square inch must be about seven¬ 
teen billions of pounds. Yet we live and move without appre¬ 
ciable resistance through this medium immensely harder and 
more elastic than adamant. All our ordinary notions must be 
laid aside in contemplating such an hypothesis ; yet it is no more 
than the observed phenomena of light and heat force us to ac¬ 
cept. We cannot deny even the strange suggestion of Young, 
that there may be independent worlds, some possibly existing in 
different parts of space, but others perhaps pervading each other 
unseen and unknown in the same space. For if we are bound to 
admit the conception of this adamantine firmament, it is equally 
easy to admit a plurality of such.” 

W- Stanley Jevons, * ‘ Principles of Science,” pp. 514-516. 

Note 14, page 109. 

“ What we call radiant heat is simply transverse wave motion, 
propagated with enormous velocity through an ocean of subtle 
ethereal matter which bathes the atoms of all visible or palpable 
bodies, and fills the whole of space, extending beyond the remotest 


APPENDIX. 


233 


star which the telescope can reach. Whether there are any 
bounds at all to this ethereal ocean, or whether it is infinite as 
space itself, we cannot surmise. If it be limited, the possible dis¬ 
persion of radiant energy is limited by its extent. Heat and light 
cannot travel through emptiness. If the ether is bounded by 
surrounding emptiness, then a ray of heat, on arriving at this 
limiting emptiness, would be reflected back as surely as a ball 
is sent back when thrown against a solid wall. 

****** 

“ The radiance thrown away by the sun is indeed lost so far as 
the future of our system is concerned, but not a single unit of it 
is lost from the universe ; sooner or later, reflected back in all 
directions, it must do work in one quarter or another, so that 
ultimate stagnation becomes impossible. It is true that no such 
return of radiant energy has been detected in our corner of the 
world ; but we have not yet so far disentangled all the force rela¬ 
tions of the universe that we are entitled to regard such a return 
as impossible.” 

John Fiske , “ The Unseen World, and other Essays ,” p. 18. 

Note 15, page 144. 

“ But we come to a point more positive and decisive : that we 
do positively know existences that cannot be included in nature, 
but constitute a higher range empowered to act upon it. This 
higher range we are ourselves, as already shown by our definition 
of the supernatural in the last chapter. By that definition we 
are now prepared to assume and formally assign the grand two¬ 
fold distinction of things and persons, or things and powers. All 
free intelligences, it was shown, the created and the uncreated, 
are, as being free, essentially supernatural in their action; hav¬ 
ing all, in the nature of their will, a power transcending cause 
and effect in nature, by which they are able to act in the lines 
and vary the combinations of natural causalities. They differ, 
in short, from everything that classes under the term nature in 
the fact that they act from themselves, uncaused in their action. 
They are powers, not things ; the radical idea of a power being 


234 


APPENDIX. 


that of an agent or force which acts from itself, uncaused, initiat¬ 
ing trains of effect that flow from itself.” 

Horace Bushnell, “ Nature and the Supernaturalp. 84. 

Note 16, page 155. 

“ For, first, Christianity has brought with it a visible society 
or Church, with dogmatic propositions and sacramental ordi¬ 
nances and a ministerial priesthood, and it has been easy so to 
misuse these elements of the ecclesiastical system as to make 
Christianity no longer devotion to a living person, but the ac¬ 
ceptance on authority of a system of theological propositions and 
ecclesiastical duties. When churclimanship assumes this degen¬ 
erate form, Christianity is not destroyed, nor does it cease to 
bring forth moral and spiritual fruit; but the fruit is of an infe¬ 
rior and less characteristic quality, it is not the spirit and temper 
of sonship. At the lowest, it even tends to approximate to what 
any religious organization is capable of producing, merely, on 
account of the discipline which it enforces and the sense of 
security which its fellowship imparts. To the true and typical 
churchman, on the other hand, all the ecclesiastical fabric only 
represents an unseen but present Lord.” 

Charles Gore's “ Incarnation of the Son of God," p. 2. 


INDEX 


Abiogenesis, Huxley on, 2 ; Haeckel on, 2, 223, 224. 

Accommodation of God to human standards, vi. 

Agassiz, 5. 

Agnosticism has something in common with Christianity, 4, 5 ; 
the truth of, 34. 

Aholiab filled with the Spirit, 138. 

All Saints’ Day, 178. 

Annihilation, 78. 

Apostles, the, incredulous of the Resurrection, 96 ; nothing to 
gain bj r preaching Christ, 96. 

Apostles’ Creed a rational faith, iii, v ; God-Father the central 
fact of, 14 ; concerns not Christ only, but the human race, 211. 

Arnold, Matthew, 145. 

Articles of Religion in time of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, 74. 

Ascension a completion of the Resurrection, 103 ; not a with¬ 
drawal from this world, 108 ; religious teaching of, 109 ; an 
answer to the cry of humanity, 110. 

Athanasian Creed, 42, 72. 

Atonement, travesty of, viii; doctrine of, 46 ; facts concerning, 
46 ; not a substitution, 54 ; not a completed work, 57 ; human 
side of, 134. 

Augustine, St., 29. 

Authorities, use of scientific, x. 

Authority in religious teaching desired by men, 151. 

Bezaleel filled with the Spirit, 138. 

Blood of Christ a figurative phrase, 55. 

Body, power of life over the human, 86 ; natural and spiritual, 
90 ; the resurrection of, 198. 

Bushnell, Horace, on powers and things, 37. 



236 


INDEX. 


Cassar, Augustus, 24, 41. 

Calvin, John, 29. 

Character and eternal life, 218. 

Christ crucified, a detail in the Great Sacrifice, 55. 

Christianity loosely held in traditional form, iv ; not to be identi¬ 
fied with literalism, iv ; its message to doubters, v ; must deal 
rationally with men, v ; what it is not, ix ; has common 
ground with science, 1 ; offers rational grounds for belief, 29 ; 
the first century of, a miracle, 143. 

Church, the, problem of her existence, iii; travesty of, viii; insti¬ 
tution of, an evidence of the resurrection of Christ, 98 ; origin 
of name, 150; the working instrument of redemption, 152 ; 
analogy with state, 153 ; denominational names, 156 ; the ex¬ 
tension of the Incarnation, 159 ; a divine institution, 159 ; is 
the Communion of Saints, 170. 

Church of England leaves endless torment an open question, 74. 

Columbus, 136. 

Communion of Saints, vague apprehension of the meaning of, 
166; materialism of the day opposes it, 167 ; definition of, 
170 ; rational illustration of, 172 ; a protest against losing our 
dead, 174 ; teaches the oneness of the human family, 173 ; is a 
glimpse of eternal life, 178. 

Conditional immortality, 79. 

Continuity of development, apparent breaks in, 22. 

Copernicus, 24. 

Creation, traditional theory of, 6 ; the great miracle, 8, 22, 
85 ; origin of life in, 38 ; the Spirit’s work in, 137. 

Creator unknowable in terms of science, 3. 

Cross, the, not merely a martyrdom, 54; the meaning of, 55 ; 
supreme lesson of, 59. 

Crucifixion, the reaction from, 56, 57 ; known to the world of 
its day, 97. 

Darwin, Charles, 5, 10; atrophy of certain senses, 29 ; on 
origin of life, 229. 

Dead, influence of, upon the living, 175. 

Death not an ultimate, but a detail of progress, 89. 

Denominations, meaning of, in the church, 156. 


IflDEX. 


23 ? 


Descent into hell, 62 ; reasons for, 65 ; Christ’s mission there, 
66 ; a rational article of faith, 71. 

Design in nature a scientific as well as religious inference, 5. 

Destiny of man, 110, 111. 

Dives, parable of, 69, 80. 

Divinity of Christ, moral argument for, 28, 30. 

Doubt not irreligious, 92. 

Edison, Thomas, 136. 

Education rather than probation, 67. 

Edward VI., articles of religion adopted in reign of, 74. 

Elizabeth, Queen, Convocation of, 74. 

Elysium, 63. 

Endless torment, vii, 72; not a necessary tenet of faith, 74, an 
open question in English Church, 74 ; economic objection to, 
76 , qualifications of, 77 ; Kingsley on, 228. 

Ephesians, Epistle to, teaches restoration, 80. 

Episcopalian, meaning of, in the church, 156. 

Eternal and everlasting, 74, 212. 

Eternal life, definition of, 74, 129 ; Scripture statements concern¬ 
ing, 213 ; begun but not completed on earth, 214, through 
Jesus Christ only, 217 ; is character, 218; pagan conception 
of, 221. 

Evangelists could not have been impostors, 96. 

Evidence, a reasonable demand for, 92 j Huxley’s position, 93 ; 
Greenleaf’s principles of, 94, 

Evil, origin of, 190. 

Evolution in the process of creation, 9 ; apparent breaks in con¬ 
tinuity, 39 * single germ theory, 39 ; what it is not, 87 ; Dar¬ 
win on, 229. 

Faith, the facts and the, vii. 

Faith, not all interpreted at one time, v 5 rational, ix. 

Fall of man, 46 ; parable of 59. 

Father-God an interpretation of man, 13, 17 ; a scientific deduc¬ 
tion, 17; implies love as a necessity, 44; the basic truth of 
Christianity, 44 


238 


INDEX. 


Fiske, John, 10 • on immortality, 89, 229 • on persistence of 
force, 232. 

Force, no spent, in the universe, 108. 

Forgiveness of sin an ultimate fact, 181, its meaning, 186 ; a 
triumph of the Incarnation, 189 , contemporary with the crea¬ 
tion, 193. 

Fox, George, 82. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 136, 216. 

Galileo, 24. 

Gehenna, 63. 

Genesis, allegorical character of, iv • and science, viii; inspiration 
of, viii, parable teaching of, 7. 

God, the Creator, 5, 6, 8: must justify His manifestation in 
man, 12; must be a Father or mere force, 12 ; knowable in 
some terms, 14» His ultimate relation to the moral universe, 
15 ; the mercy of, 71 { an economist in nature, 76. 

Gordon, General, in the Soudan, 40* 

Gore, Charles, on the miraculous, 16 , on the Church, 234. 

Gospel preached to the dead, 66 ; possible motives of, 68. 

Gray, Asa, 10. 

Greenleaf, Simon, Testimony of the Evangelists, and principles 
of evidence, 94. 

Hades, 63. 

Haeckel on abiogenesis, 2 223, 224. 

Harvey, Sir William, 216 

Heredity and original sin, 50. 

Hinnom, Valley of, 75* 

Holy of Holies of the universe, 111 

Holy Spirit, guidance into truth continuous, vi * a perpetual out¬ 
flow of God’s life into creation, 7 , Christ's promise of 134 ; 
threefold working of, 134 ; not a creation of Christianity, 137 • 
the inspiration of humanity, 139 ; historical gift of, 141, 143 ; 
working of, 143 ; demands a receptive condition, 146 ; the 
vital fact of Christianity, 148 , the sin against, 149; is mani¬ 
fested through earth forms, 151, 216. 

Human nature incomplete in itself, 13. 



INDEX. 


239 


Humanity of Christ the basis of our knowledge of His divinity, 
19. 

Hume on miracles controverted by Huxley, 92, 230. 

Huxley, Professor, on abiogenesis, 2 ; on evidence, 93 ; on 
Hume’s argument, 92 ; on spontaneous generation, 224 ; on 
scientific data, 225 ; on parthenogenesis, 226. 

Immortality, 220 ; John Fiske on, 89. 

Incarnation not a novel idea with Christianity, 20, 34 ; key of, to 
be found in a Father-God, 20; rational grounds of, 21 ; pur¬ 
pose of, 37, 39 ; a truth for the unbeliever, 44 ; the Holy 
Spirit’s work in, 143 ; not yet completed on its human side, 
152 ; fulfilment of, in the forgiveness of sins, 189; coincident 
with creation, 193. 

Infallibility of Empire, Church, and Bible, vi. 

Inspiration of the Scriptures, vii; of Genesis, viii; mechanical the¬ 
ory of, 17 ; of man, narrow views of, 147. 

Institutions, Christian, underlie the world’s progress, 163. 

Intermediate state, 62. 

Isaiah, use of the symbols of fire and worm, 75. 

Jenner, Sir William, 216. 

Jerusalem, destruction of, a judgment of God, 121. 

Jesus Christ, the answer to man’s questioning of God, 18, 35 ; 
the highest of the human series, 19 ; the historical person, 19 ; 
the divine being, 20 ; the Only Son, 26, 35 ; did not come to 
earth merely to die, 27 ; moral argument for divinity, 28 ; in 
what sense our Master, 28 ; testimony of, concerning Himself, 
31 ; historical achievements, 40; birth marked the fulness of 
times, 41 ; nature of His sacrifice, 54, 55 ; preaches to the dead, 
66 ; the moral dilemma of His claims, 88; the only judge of 
man, 131 ; His influence preserved by the Church, 163 ; the 
friend of sinners, 185 ; manifests God’s love, 190 ; firstfruits 
of the human harvest, 196 ; after the Resurrection, 204. 

Jevons, Dr. W. Stanley, 107 ; on the qualities of ether, 232. 

Judaism, the judgment of, 122, 

Judgment, the final, a result of Christ’s connection with human¬ 
ity, 116 ; a revelation of the ultimate relations of God and 


240 


INDEX. 


man, 117 ; a doctrine of the first disciples, 117 ; God’s frequent 
comings in, 118 ; historical illustrations, 118 ; Bishop Westcott 
on, 119 ; popular idea of, 119; final as to this dispensation 
only, 122, 128; necessary for God’s justification, 126 ; indi¬ 
vidual, 127 ; the uncovering of man to himself, 129. 

Keppler’s laws, 216. 

Kingsley, Charles, on endless torment, 228. 

Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, 87, 216. 

Larger hope, 79. 

Law the manifested mode of God’s workings, 35 ; both direct 
and indirect action observed, 37 ; not exhausted to the human 
view, 87 ; variations not necessarily breaks of, 87 ; human, 
knows no forgiveness, 184. 

Leslie’s, Charles, test rules applied to the Resurrection, 95. 

Life, origin of, 38 ; unicellular, 39 ; persistence of, 124. 

Lord’s Supper grounded in the Resurrection, 98. 

Love of God is sacrifice, 52 ; must finally triumph, 81. 

Lucock, Canon, 166. 

MacColl, Malcolm, on the miracle of creation, 225. 

Man differentiated from the rest of creation, 5; the highest 
created form, 11 ; transcends physical conditions, 12, 25 ; im¬ 
perfect without spiritual development, 39 ; a supernatural 
being, 47 ; place in the Atonement, 49 ; not left alone at any 
point of his life, 134. 

McCosh, Dr. James, 10. 

Maclear, G. F., on the resurrection of the body, 205. 

Miracle, creation, not its process, the chief, 8, 225 ; not a rever¬ 
sal of nature, 16 ; of creation, 22 ; credibility of, 92; not a 
proof of Christianity, 142. 

Mohammed a judgment of God, 121. 

Mohammedanism contrasted with Christianity, 143. 

Morality, distinction of, from religion, 218. 


Napoleon, 40. 


INDEX. 


241 


Nature, God’s relations to, are manifested, 10. 
Newton, Isaac, 136, 216. 

Origin of life and nature, 5. 

Origin of species, Darwin on, 229. 

Original sin a doctrine of physiology, 50. 


Parable-teaching in Genesis, 7. 

Parthenogenesis not an assumption of Christianity, 36 ; Weiss- 
man on, 227 ; Huxley on, 226. 

Paul, St., the seer of the larger hope, 79 ; on the Resurrection, 

201 , 202 . 

Pentecost, Feast of, 141. 

Preaching, subject of Christ’s, in Hades, 66 ; result of, 71. 

Presbyterianism and Unitarianism, 43. 

Probation, 67 ; beyond this world, 71. 

Prodigal son, parable of, 59, 70. 

Punishment, future, three theories of, 72. 

Purgatory, 64 ; growth of the doctrine of, 65. 

Rationalism of faith, ix ; Jesus’ approval of, xi. 

Reason, function of, in relation to faith, v. 

Recognition after death, 203, 209. 

Redemption, universal, 53 ; a process of ascent, 58 ; from sin, 
188. 

Reformation, the English, iv ; a judgment of God, 121. 

Reincarnation is subjective annihilation, 169. 

Religion and science, prime facts of both, 1, 2 ; and morality, 
218. 

Resurrection of Christ the prime historical fact of Christianity, 
83 ; a lesser miracle than Incarnation or creation, 85 ; pagan 
ideas of, 90 ; historical evidence of, 91; appearances after, 
94 ; Leslie’s test rules of, 95 ; moral effect of belief in, 100 ; 
not completed without the ascension, 103. 

Resurrection of the body, difference between Christ’s and ours, 
196 ; not a new idea with Christianity, 197 ; the opposite of 
reincarnation, 198 ; not literal, 200 ; St. Paul on, 201, 202 ; 


242 


INDEX. 


means persistence of identity, 203 ; does not inhere in atoms, 
206 ; Maclear on, 205 ; arguments for, 206; the expansion of 
life, 206 ; personal recognition involved, 208 ; crystallizes the 
dream of immortality, 210. 

Retribution not arbitrary, 182; a truth of science and of 
society, 183. 

Sabbath, change of feast day to Sunday, 98. 

Sacraments, travesty of, viii. 

Sacrifice, ancient idea of, 51 ; traditional view, 52 ; the God- 
idea of, 53 ; Christ’s method of, 54, 55, 57. 

Saints, 171. 

Salvation through suffering a law of development, 54. 

Science, testimony of, to a spiritual world, 105 ; catholicity of, 
161 ; on the resurrection of the body, 200. 

Science and religion, prime facts of both, identical, 1, 2. 

Science and the Scriptures discrepancies, iv, v, viii. 

Scriptures, material language of, 201. 

Sheol, 63. 

Sin emphasized not minimized, 125 ; consciousness of, will re¬ 
store the sinner, 126 ; punishment of, inevitable, 130 ; forgive¬ 
ness of (see Forgiveness); has been a factor in all human his¬ 
tory, 181; definition of, 181 ; cannot be isolated from its 
effects, 182 ; the penalty of, 185. 

Spencer, Herbert, 2, 10, 14, 16,142. 

Spiritual world, testimony of science to, 105 ; analogies of, 106. 

Spiritual body, 109, 202, 204. 

Spiritualism, vulgar use of, 107 ; a degrading substitute, 169. 

Spontaneous generation, 223 ; Huxley on, 224. 

State, analogy of, to the Church, 153. 

Sunday, institution of, an evidence of the Resurrection, 98. 

Supernaturalism of the Christian Church scouted, 168. 

Supernaturalism, man a proof of the truth of, 86. 


Tartarus, 63. 

Temptation, the parable of man’s inherent powers, 58. 
Tetzel, the peddler of indulgences, 64. 


INDEX. 


243 


Theism a germ truth of Christianity and all religion, 1 ; a 
scientific inference, 16. 

Theology, traditional, 6; represents Christ as an afterthought, 
27 ; some alternatives to its propositions demanded, 43. 

Thomas, the doubter, prefers to believe, x; Christ’s method 
with, xi. 

Transfiguration, the, 170. 

Trent, Council of, 64. 

Trinity, traversty of, vii; in relation to the Atonement, 65 ; in¬ 
adequacy of theological statements concerning, 140; facts 
upon which the doctrine is based, 140. 

Truth is one, 135 ; needs an interpreter, 136. 

Tyndall, John, 5, 109, 142. 

Unitarianism, 43 ; a revolt from Tritheism, 140. 

Unity of the race in the last judgment, 128. 

Unknowable, the, Spencer’s theory of, 16. 

Vicarious sacrifice, the, 53 ; not new with Christian theology, 54. 

Virgin-birth, the, 32, 35 ; how far it is of necessary belief, 42. 

Watts, Isaac, 216. 

Weissman, August, on parthenogenesis, 227. 

Westcott on the judgment, 119. 

World, end of, predicted in like terms of religion and science, 
123. 




















































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